Apex Construct (PS4)

Apex Construct looks like it’s going to be a sci-fi twist to an archery VR game, and that sounds like a sound fit for a game to play on your PSVR. However, when you first lift your bow, you’ll notice a few things don’t line up properly. You can’t really utilize a proper archery stance from real life with the Move controllers, but even more disorienting is the fact that the game seems to have a sketchy relationship with detecting how you actually need to draw the bow string. You will want to pull an arrow back if you want to get some real distance on your shot, but at other times, holding your hands the right way can allow you to rapid fire arrows just by mashing the trigger button. Even if you’re willing to accept the breaks from expected bow use in VR though, most everything else added to Apex Construct’s design feels like it further causes issues, even a straightforward archery game likely to have been better off than what we got.

Apex Construct takes place apparently after the end of the world and almost all life, and yet this choice in setting seems to mostly manifest as a reason to throw together some outside spaces that are hodgepodges of city architecture from Stockholm, Sweden. You are a human who has found themselves in the odd space outside of the destroyed Earth, now outfitted with a robotic hand to help wield a bow that utilizes a special energy developed by a company called Cygnia that was in part responsible for the world ending. However, your role is essentially as the arms and legs for an AI named Fathr who wants you to take out another AI called Mothr. Mothr uses her power to assemble robotic enemies you’ll be shooting down while also telling you that you shouldn’t trust Fathr much, a fact made pretty apparent early on when you’re finding data logs of people noticing oddities in Fathr’s behavior. It does sound like an interesting mystery on its surface, although it’s also one the game doesn’t ultimately deliver on well, especially since there is no way to diverge from the story path you’re set on.

What makes the battle between the AIs so strange though is how incongruous it can feel with the logs left by the humans who designed them. It seems the unusual energy Cygnia was experimenting with called Radiance was mostly used for cybersports, and while this might be an attempt at justification for why a world with advanced technology would choose to develop a bow and arrow rather than a gun, it also leads to many logs you find seeming almost goofy. The company sends out memos that claim that Radiance is completely safe while also saying if you do end up mutating from it they’d love to research you, and quite a few notes complain about a bit of nepotism with the incompetent employee Dylan. It feels like there’s a parody of corporate callousness going on, but Fathr speaks rather gravely during the entire mission and neither AI ever really seems to dip into anything comedic. Again, it feels like some of the writing in these notes and data logs is written to justify the game design; Dylan being incompetent means people have to leave password reminders about that you can then utilize. Unfortunately, the game heavily leans on you learning 4 digit codes to make progress, one of the game’s notes even criticizing it as annoying as if that would help make the unimaginative barrier to progress any better by acknowledging it.

Apex Construct feels like it needed some stronger motivations or more compelling collectible notes to find to balance out its actual moments of action. The movement is handled fairly well at least, the player able to teleport where they point while also having more normal movement options if they so wish. The cobbled together pieces of Stockholm often expect you to navigate by teleportation so it is easy to get hitched on a small crack or ledge while trying to navigate, but the movement is rarely going to be the issue when it comes time to use your bow on the enemy machines. At first skirmishes with the most common robot type, a skittering machine that almost feels like some sort of large bug, will be pretty simple. They aim their energy weapons pretty well so you might wish you could dodge the shot, but your bow has a shield you can pull up so long as you aren’t drawing or firing an arrow. The shield will break if overused, but it’s pretty easy to find a pattern for shielding and shooting and sometimes if you’re not quick on the draw you’ll take damage. It’s not compelling, but it’s a fine baseline for the action.

Things start to get aggravating when other systems are layered over top it though. Eventually the standard enemies get the power to teleport too, meaning it’s easier for them to catch you unaware and land a shot. Your health isn’t displayed the best so even if you do elect to use a healing item you can still find yourself dying surprisingly quickly in the next skirmish, but things get truly tedious and annoying when enemies start utilizing energy shields. Covering their entire bodies and preventing all damage from your standard arrows, they are meant to get you using a newly unlocked electrical arrow outside of the switch hitting puzzles. The problem though is the electrical arrow that makes the shield disappear only lowers the enemy’s barrier for a few seconds. If you try to then fire on the enemy while the shield is down, you’ll be using your electric arrows, and you’re only able to fire a small amount before you’ll need to stand back and wait for them to recharge for a few seconds. The enemy’s shield will have inevitably recharged by then, and the enemy inevitably moves while you try to shoot at them while the game also has hit detection that means you can miss if you’re just a touch off from hitting the foe. This means you’ll likely miss some electric arrow shots and barely be able to damage this enemy type, but you might be wondering why you don’t swap to standard arrows here. They are infinite in use and have no recharge drawbacks, but to swap ammo types you need to pull up a holographic menu on your left hand. Already this means lowering your bow in general, but detection issues in selecting things in this little menu means it’s not easy to utilize it quickly, after which you’d still need to raise the bow and begin firing. By then, the enemy shield is likely going back up or they’ve fired on you during the period you couldn’t utilize your shield, and death in this imprecise VR game is made oddly punishing for some reason.

When defeating enemies or finding certain secrets in Apex Construct, you’ll earn Radiance Points. The RP can be used at vending machines for healing items or grenades, although grenades generally aren’t worth the investment considering the enemy mobility at play and how most fights of any size roll out their enemies in groups of two at most. However, where RP really can help is in buying upgrades between missions. You can do things like increase the durability of your energy shield or the amount of shock arrows you can fire before recharging, and perhaps in a better paced game the initial drawbacks would be sanded away by this ability to improve your character. One huge thing gets in the way of this system though beyond just not explaining the upgrades well beyond wordless icons, and that is that RP is lost on death. Your RP will only be saved after completing a stage, and while there are a good degree of checkpoints within a level to make it so you’re rarely repeating too much, the loss of RP can be incredibly disheartening. Each enemy type becomes more annoying because of it. The drawn out battles with the barrier-bearing robots can make it likely enough lucky hits will eventually take you out. The robotic dogs who sprint towards you to detonate would be a valid threat when you have to wipe out groups of foes one after another for fear of having to retry it, but instead they feel more like meddlesome ambushes meant to wipe away your RP stash.

The late introduction of explosive arrows at least give you a way to deal damage to shielded enemies reliably, although they are fewer in number before needing recharges and the recharge time is over double of the shock arrows, so inevitably you’ll be standing and waiting with nothing much to do besides shield incoming shots or wait behind some cover and hope they don’t skitter towards you. The sad thing though is Apex Construct shows it can construct some better battles. Area reuse across missions is unfortunately common and there are definitely times where you find yourself just looking down a hallway, firing arrows, and raising your shield without much in the way of options to speed it up or make it more exciting. At other times though, especially in the few moments you need to stand your ground against waves of enemies, it feels like there’s some properly designed danger on top of room for strategy. Finding your vantage points, moving when it’s smart to, managing enemies so you don’t get ambushed when new ones arrive, these battles feel like they better draw out what fun could be had with the archery on offer and tellingly they lack shielded enemies entirely. There is also one robot type that serves as a boss that works well as you need to hit certain body parts in time to avoid damage, although it is telling that at one point, when the game faked out a rematch with that boss to instead throw shielded bug robots at you, I would have feared the boss rematch far less.

You’ll still have too much wandering around facilities looking for four digit codes for the moments where the combat works to really redeem the rest of the game’s design, but there’s also a mode called Cygnia Cup you can play any time from the main menu. Cygnia Cup is a high score challenge and essentially just a shooting gallery using the game’s mechanics and assets. You shoot floating or moving targets for points, hitting the center and not missing any will earn you more points, and your special arrows are instead used to make special high value targets appear rather than having to deal with tedious robot battles. Robots can appear during the cup but they’re just ways to earn points instead of a threat, and with a timer for each section of the cup, you also want to balance pursuing extra bonus opportunities with actually clearing out the required targets so you can move to a different spot. This is probably closer to executing the idea of a sci-fi archery game properly if a bit plainly and at least shows what Cygnia’s cybersports development could have looked like, but it’s not in-depth enough to be more than a side mode so it can’t excuse the issues with the story mode.

THE VERDICT: Apex Construct could have been a fine game about shooting robots with a bow, and at a few points it actually realizes that idea well enough. However, then long stretches are spent retreading ground to find new keycodes, listening to a story that doesn’t really feel like it wraps up, and contending with the different issues with things like losing your upgrade currency and enemies designed to be fought in slow bland skirmishes. Cygnia Cup’s straightforward shooting gallery approach may be a bit of a basic side mode, but it at least feels like it better achieves what it sets out to do compared to the aggravating, aimless, and poorly planned main campaign.

And so, I give Apex Construct for PlayStation 4…

A TERRIBLE rating. Apex Construct isn’t a game made bad by being in VR, it’s a bad game that happens to be in VR. The bow firing detection issues are a bit of a hiccup, but they don’t compare to the problems with encounter design. The shielded enemies are basically just the standard robot but a little faster at firing so dragging out the fight does nothing to add more excitement to the game, especially when the tools used to take them out are designed with inexplicably long waits and low ammo counts. The Radiance Points could have been a saving grace, a way to turn the tables and shorten waits, but instead enemies keep getting stronger and more durable while your own strength can’t be guaranteed. If there were even just more chances to bank RP or make mid-level checkpoints then it might be more feasible to remain competitive, but even if a level is just filled with standard robots, there’s still a decent chance you’ll eventually be worn down. You can carry six healing items even though healing doesn’t always seem to be too helpful, but more importantly, your inventory in general is limited to six slots and you sometimes have key items to carry with it or keycode reminders that would otherwise requiring backtracking over all too familiar ground if you didn’t commit the codes to memory. Every now and then you’ll get the oddly refreshing bit of action that feels like it had some thought put into it, but too often it’s wisest to hunker down behind cover and take repeated potshots or you’re contending with a teleporting shielded nuisance that takes too long to kill.

The many failures of Apex Construct at least put into perspective what can work within its game design. It’s not a fast shooter or one with a big focus on frequent movement, so those moments you stand your ground and can’t just hide behind a rock or corner show there is some merit to the design. Quicker arrow swapping or even slashing arrow recharge time in half would do a lot to reinvigorate the game since there would still be limits but not nearly as much waiting, although perhaps more quickly getting you back to scrounging for computer terminals and papers with passwords on them might mean even more time with the repetitive and lifeless parts of the experience. Sadly, whether you’re looking for an archery game, sci-fi story, or some simple fun killing robots in VR, Apex Construct far too often fails at each angle to be worthy of consideration.