Apex Patrol is an interactive fiction novel written by Allen Gies. The game takes place in the far future where you are the Commanding Officer aboard a star cruiser commissioned by the righteous Apex Patrol; their overall demeanor can be placed somewhere in between the bureaucratic Citadel in Mass Effect and any given organization representing the “good guys” in Star Trek.
The author does a great job opening up the plot-line at the beginning of the story. He steadily eases the reader/player into the motions, giving you just enough options to feel involved. It’s easy for most to say that these types of games are not their cup of tea but if you can’t just go download EVE because your computer sucks or if you don’t fancy the many 4X space titles out there then this is something you might want to check out. Apex Patrol stays true to the science-fiction genre by including a character who happens to be an absolute expert at techno-babble. Everyone knows that by including as many numbers as possible in one sentence you can easily intimidate the person you are talking to, just remember all of those times you hyper-ventilated during a math test. Apex Patrol will have you foaming at the mouth.
The controls are simple, selecting options and hitting the “next” button shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Your stats are viewable by clicking the “Show stats” button and that will display your skill set, you might want to keep an eye on that stuff since every skill plays a major role in your characters progression. These games can be tough to code and edit at the same time so naturally you might come across small grammatical mistakes. Otherwise the game is pretty well written and considerably enjoyable for die-hard science-fiction fans like myself.
On the downside the story can flat-line for a few walls of text making it too easy for someone to just put it down and move on. The game itself is pretty approachable even though its niche is pretty specific. The author attempts to create some bond between the characters involved in the story but falls just short of successfully doing so. However for those people who just want to jump in and enjoy the content for what it is then most of these things shouldn’t be an issue. The game offers a fairly balanced plot line keeping the transitions from scene-to-scene smooth and enjoyable so basically, you’ll be looking forward to every page.
Apex Patrol is about $0.99 on the iTune and Android app stores and quite honestly if you don’t have the extra cash needed to go pick up a paperback I say give this one a go. If you have ever wanted to be a boring earth-bound astronaut (who hasn’t?) or maybe a real space pioneering rocket-man/woman extraordinaire then Apex Patrol should keep you busy imagining what that would really be like. Otherwise you could just go to college for it and end up teaching some 10th grade chemistry class.
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