The Cycle: Frontier is a free-to-play multiplayer game with a bunch of good ideas. Unfortunately, they’re all somebody else’s ideas. It bills itself as an ‘extraction shooter’, where players must ‘Escape’ from an area that is definitely not named 'Tarkov' with whatever loot they can grab between insertion and extraction. It couples this with a fairly unsubtle borrowing of Apex Legends' aesthetic and general feel, then throws in all the free-to-play gubbins that Diablo Immortal recently received considerable flak for.
The game puts you in the role of a Prospector, which is basically a Stalker from S.T.A.L.K.E.R, only without the gas mask and fondness for vodka. You spend your days descending from a space-station to the former planetary colony of Fortuna III, seeking to scavenge whatever technological nuggets you can from its surface, before heading to the nearest drop-zone to call a ride home. But beware! As well as being littered with hostile alien lifeforms, Fortuna III is also prowled by other Prospectors who will happily rip the shirt off your back (after ripping the life from your body).
Droppelganger
Now, to be fair to Yager, this is hardly the first time a developer has built a game out of other developers’ leftovers. And the resulting experience looks and feels appealing enough. You start each round by descending to the surface in a drop-pod, which is always the best way to arrive at any event. Weddings, children’s birthday parties, even funerals would be improved if the coffin was delivered from some orbital corpse-cannon. Anyway, the door of your pod hisses open, and you clamber out into a lush alien world of purplish swamps and verdant jungles, all loomed over by one of gaming’s favourite planet-types, a ringed gas giant. Interspersed across Fortuna III are named locations like lagoons, research facilities, and industrial centres, which the map’s topography cleverly funnels players toward to increase the chance of encounters.
Mechanically, The Cycle is all dependably slick too, which you’d expect from a game that’s clearly analysed Apex Legends under an electron microscope. Movement has that same limber physicality of Respawn’s shooter, and the weapons all pop and snap with a pleasing degree of feedback. That said, Yager’s shooter still isn’t quite as refined as Apex. Mantling ledges is decidedly unreliable, and The Cycle replaces Apex delightful infinite knee slide with, wait for it, a stamina bar. Yep, instead of sliding around the map like a seal in a bowling alley, you get to occasionally crouch in a bush while your character catches his breath.
While down on the planet, there are three ways to acquire loot. You can scan for minerals to mine with your pickaxe, rummage through ruined prefabs for goodies left behind by the colonists, or pursue quests for three different “factions” you meet in the game’s hub. These quests are basically MMO-style “Kill three monsters” or “Collect three items” affairs, only here there’s a chance another player will rock up and murder you while you’re picking flowers by a lakeside.
When you die (and in the words of Oliver Reed in Gladiator, die you shall) you lose any items and equipment you were carrying, save the handful of items you carry in your “safe pockets”, which presumably have a little dial on them instead of a zip. You can recoup some of the funds from this lost gear by insuring it, but you’ll still have to head to the in-game shop to re-outfit yourself with weapons, ammo, armour, consumables like health stims and grenades, and tools like the mineral scanner.
The problem with The Cycle is that, although it melds the concept of Tarkov with the feel of Apex, the result loses most of what made those games special. The arcadey combat makes The Cycle more accessible than Tarkov, but it also drains a lot of the tension. There isn’t much reason to move methodically or tactically, you’re better off running as fast as you can between areas and hoping this will get you past anyone who gets the drop on you.
At the same time, The Cycle has the art of Apex, but none of the character. The Prospectors are just faceless humans with guns, and have neither the personality of Apex’s heroes, nor the creative abilities that enable clever plays. This means there isn’t much scope for variety in combat, with most battles decided during the initial exchange of bullets. It also lacks the immediacy of Apex. Win or lose a match in Respawn’s game, you can always dive straight into another. In The Cycle, there’s a chunk of busywork between each run, like resolving quests and retooling either part or all your inventory.
Break the cycle
"The one idea The Cycle can reasonably call, not exactly original, but at least less obviously borrowed, are its cycle storms."
The one idea The Cycle can reasonably call, not exactly original, but at least less obviously borrowed, are its cycle storms. These giant radioactive tempests occur periodically during play, and when they’re active, you’re locked out of using any transportation to and from the planet. But they also churn up rarer forms of loot, giving those players brave enough to stick it out a chance to earn some serious coin. They’re as spectacular as they are dangerous, adding a certain spice that The Cycle is otherwise lacking. But they’re also transient, and without more consistent ways of keeping players interested in playing, this means there’s much less padding between you and the free-to-play grind at The Cycle’s heart.
While it’s hard to gauge without spending dozens of hours in it, The Cycle’s free-to-play model seems less egregious than Diablo Immortal. But it still employs all the same cynical tricks. A bamboozling network of currencies, timers on rewards that range from minutes to days, a labyrinthine upgrade system where you need to gather complex combinations of resources to gain the most incremental improvements to your gear and daily rewards. It’s all a constant reminder that, ultimately, this game isn’t designed with your entertainment foremost in mind. It’s designed to find ways to extract money from your wallet, to make you think that, maybe this time you’ve come back from Fortuna III empty handed, you should probably splash some cash and get properly kitted out.
Ultimately though, the free-to-play model isn’t the biggest problem here. It’s that The Cycle’s melting pot of ideas doesn’t result in a better experience than the games it took those ideas from. It’s not terrible – the world is nice and the combat feels decent – but it’s also not exciting or interesting enough that you would choose to play it over the games that inspired it.
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