APB is by no means a game to avoid, it is a game to take into consideration before buying however. After playing for over 100 hours on both criminal and enforcer characters, heres what I took away from the game.
Customisation is key, this is what the developers have clearly spent all of their time working on. You are expected to spend a large percentage of your time getting your character truly unique, which during the beta felt odd due to the inevitable wipe. It did not however stop me experimenting and getting to a stage where I felt comfortable enough using the tools, they are designed with enough fidelity to allow your creations to come to life, with the right amount of work.
Of course not everyone will want to spend hours playing with the tools to get a good look, gang clothing is avaliable from the vendors to provide a quick and easy alternative look, albeit not unique.
The mission structure works well for the type of game, there is a feeling of progression and working your way up the ranks through reputation gives a steady flow of income and rewards. It does however get to feel like the same endless fetch quest after the first two or three 'pledges'. This is broken up by the occasional cat and mouse mission that may be thrown to the enforcers, allowing them to chase after a criminal who has been witnessed committing a crime. This is fine for the enforcer, who can choose to take the mission or ignore it. However criminals are never safe, usually when first entering an area someone will instantly be dispatched against you, so leaving your character in an action district is a strict no-no. There were many times I simply went to get a drink only to come back and find I'd been killed.
The community is at the head of this game, if you can find a good group of players to level your pledges with, the game becomes a lot more fun. Group play will offer more reputation and cash, as well as generally more challenging or interesting missions. Instead of a 3 stage mission involving nothing but graffiti, it may change into a protect the VIP which becomes a PvP frenzy.
This does however bring one huge problem, if you fall behind in APB, you notice it fast. Even in beta there were rank 230+ players who had essentially broken the game, with guns and upgrades that allowed them to dominate over everyone else as the matchmaking was based on 'threat level', something temporary that rises or lowers depending on mission success.
The final point that needs to be made is about the simply horrible combat, for a game that has been in development for so long it feels clunky as all hell. With no headshots, all shots are valued the same. Being killed by someone spamming your foot with an N-Tec (the games AK-47) is never a good feeling and simply leads to frustration, even moreso when you're killed as you run behind a wall because your laggy hitbox is still behing shot.
The game is worth trying if you are willing to invest the time into character creation and are a community player who will look for a gang who you find it easy to play/socialise with. If you want to play a well designed online shooter, avoid this game, there are far better options avaliable to you without monthly fees in many cases. Also anyone purchasing this game should...no...MUST have a powerful PC. This game eats through your ram and cpu, it will also demand a huge amount of bandwith due to its constant pulling and sending of information thanks to the huge amount of customisation.
Hope this opinion has helped some of you out there, questions welcome about any aspect of the game, thanks for reading my novel.
APB Reloaded
Game » consists of 8 releases. Released Jun 29, 2010
Better known as the free-to-play "APB: Reloaded", APB is a MMO third-person shooter by the developers of Crackdown. Players choose between the hard-boiled law enforcers or the feared criminals as they try to stop the opposing faction's objectives.
An honest opinion, from playing the game beta to test world
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