By far the most disappointing aspect of Apex is that its premise of running your own car brand is a narrative gimmick, NOT a gameplay gimmick. Despite the focus on building a performance vehicle manufacturer from the ground up, Apex does not allow you to actually design your own vehicles, and instead allows you to pick from a selection of 3 pre-designed vehicles for every class. This means that, underneath the unique hook, Apex is in reality a far more generic racer that has an interesting but shallow narrative (no notable characters here!).
Beyond this let-down, Apex is a competent racer that executes everything it wants to do. The racing is both exciting and somewhat forgiving; mistakes are easy to make and your opponents are almost always on your ass, but this is made up for by a catch-up system that usually makes sure that one bad turn will not throw out an entire 5 minute race. The handling model itself is somewhat slippery and loose, but consistent enough to allow mastery with enough time. Finally, the actual brand management side of the game begins and ends with picking which car gets developed and put in your garage out of the present blueprints available. Progress is marked not by marketing strategy or design finesse, but is instead advanced only by your performance on-track. I really cannot overstate the shallowness of this side of Apex, a real shame when compared to how solid the racing engine is.
Not only does the on-track experience play great, but it looks fantastic too. Detail is abundant throughout the tracks and are accompanied by attractive distractions such as giant video advertisements above the environment or support vehicles zipping around behind crowds on the track limits. The OST unfortunately does not have the same amount of effort put into it, sounding more akin to a 5th generation off-brand sports game filler rather than a soundtrack that belongs to a game that is as well made in other areas as Apex is.
While wasted potential is certainly disheartening, it is nowhere near as annoying as an ACTUALLY low quality game, which Apex is not. To its credit, Apex is a fun racer that clearly just needed more support and time to execute on the greater of its ideas. Unfortunately, Atari may have been too busy pumping the GDP of a small island nation into a GTA knock-off to give further attention to a small arcade title made by a mid-budget dev.
Beyond this let-down, Apex is a competent racer that executes everything it wants to do. The racing is both exciting and somewhat forgiving; mistakes are easy to make and your opponents are almost always on your ass, but this is made up for by a catch-up system that usually makes sure that one bad turn will not throw out an entire 5 minute race. The handling model itself is somewhat slippery and loose, but consistent enough to allow mastery with enough time. Finally, the actual brand management side of the game begins and ends with picking which car gets developed and put in your garage out of the present blueprints available. Progress is marked not by marketing strategy or design finesse, but is instead advanced only by your performance on-track. I really cannot overstate the shallowness of this side of Apex, a real shame when compared to how solid the racing engine is.
Not only does the on-track experience play great, but it looks fantastic too. Detail is abundant throughout the tracks and are accompanied by attractive distractions such as giant video advertisements above the environment or support vehicles zipping around behind crowds on the track limits. The OST unfortunately does not have the same amount of effort put into it, sounding more akin to a 5th generation off-brand sports game filler rather than a soundtrack that belongs to a game that is as well made in other areas as Apex is.
While wasted potential is certainly disheartening, it is nowhere near as annoying as an ACTUALLY low quality game, which Apex is not. To its credit, Apex is a fun racer that clearly just needed more support and time to execute on the greater of its ideas. Unfortunately, Atari may have been too busy pumping the GDP of a small island nation into a GTA knock-off to give further attention to a small arcade title made by a mid-budget dev.