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Gears of Glory: Apex Ace – Singleplayer Game Modes

Posted Sep 14, 2012, Reading time: 4 minutes.

There has been much discussion over the past view days about the game modes planned for Gears of Glory: Apex Ace, especially given the ‘never seen before‘ time-shifted multiplayer of a racing game featured during this weeks Apple iPhone 5 keynote.

I’m not going to go into detail of what I think about the feature, or what past games had interactive ghosts/replays and how the affected gameplay. This post is about what Gears of Glory: Apex Ace offers.

The open beta releasing super-soon comes with several race modes:

Season Tier time-trial
In this mode, players race all of the season circuits. As they race, setting best laps and finding better lines to rise in the leaderboards, opponents appear alongside the players own best lap replay.

This is the first part of the Dynamic Opponent System at work – the opponent you face is usually the person directly above you in the leaderboards. As you progress, new opponents appear – and this happens on the fly.

So regardless of where you are, the singleplayer element revolves around racing other player laps, which have been raced at any time, and means you are always competing.

Player Race
This mode is very simple – when you view the Season Tier leaderboards, you can browse the ranking, and race any lap on the boards. Any. If your friend is above you in the standings and you just can’t find the time to beat them via the season time-trial, race directly against them and check out where they find time on the lap. If your friend is below you, view his lap and offer advice of where he can improve.

Player Challenge
This mode is very difficult, and successful players receive many trophies (the XP/score unit in the game). It is exactly as the Player race, apart from the fact the replay you are racing against is not a ghost but an interactive, collidable, entity.

To beat their lap, you need to find and maintain space to overtake. You can jostle, however, the game does not let you influence the lap time of the other player. If you try to ram, or jostle to an unacceptable level, you will crash and be left with a bad lap. Because of the trophy reward associated with this, only players around or above your current ranking can be raced. You cannot play the system by challenging the player last on the boards.

The three modes above is what’s shipping in the open beta. The next game mode is something I am quite excited about, and extends the dynamic opponents system.

Championship mode
In this mode, it is set out similar to racing games players already understand – circuits raced in a calendar style, progressing to different classes of car and larger, more challenging circuits. However, Gears of Glory: Apex Ace does not have different classes of car – only different classes of racers.

As you race, your position in the rankings is again measured. A grid of opponents is created, dynamically, from other players on the leaderboards around your position. Depending on the difficulty you play at, these players may be far ahead of you in the standings, or directly around you. You race a series of laps, but not in a time trial fashion – this is your standard, lap-bound, first to the finish race. You must maintain competitive, consistent lap times to progress. As you progress, the field around you changes to reflect your standings, making you compete against a different class of racer.

There is no AI at all in this mode. There is no AI in the game at all. If you see another racecar in Gears of Glory: Apex Ace, it is another player. That player does not need to be online for you to race their laps. Their best laps are all stored and retrieved from the OnlineServices.

I’ll keep everyone up to date on the progress for this mode, I obviously think it’s great 😉

Now, I need help from you. If you can find another racer that has a feature similar to this championship mode description, please tell me, I want to know! I’ve not seen any, but there are so many games out there.

So there we have it. The race modes of Gears of Glory: Apex Ace. If you have any questions, feel free to comment, either here or on facebook. You can contact me directly instead if you’d like, at @domipheus.