First Look: APB
- June 04, 2009 11:35 AM PST
- Email this!
One-hundred gun-toting, one-of-a-kind players. Over one thousand incredibly detailed civilians. Several enormous cities open to explore, shoot and race through as you please. What do you get? One absolutely astounding game.
Massive is an understatement
When I first heard about Real Time Worlds' APB: All Points Bulletin, I'll admit that I was pretty skeptical. While I love open-world sandbox titles and I'm a bit ashamed at how much I've spent on MMO subscriptions, I just couldn't see the two genres melding in a successful manner. Enter Real Time Worlds' creative director, the legendary Dave Jones - the man behind the original Grand Theft Auto, Lemmings, and Crackdown - and his expert team of developers to prove me wrong. My first glimpse of APB was during the EA keynote, and I think everyone that wasn't too busy picking their collective jaws up off the floor can attest: it looks amazing.
But, wait - I'm not entirely sold. It may look amazing, but there has to be a catch. Many MMOs boast customization features, but you end up spending half of the time on those servers walking past dozens of clones of yourself, each altered maybe by a hairstyle or an off-colored robe. After the behind-closed-doors demo of APB, I can't imagine two characters in the All Points Bulletin universe looking remotely similar. We were shown an in-depth tour of the in-game character customization feature, where we saw everything from abs flattened to love handles squeezed out to eyes bulged on a series of character models- all with the click of a mouse. Throw in an incredibly in-depth graphic designer, and you have tattoos, decals, and a character that isn't just an in-game avatar - it's you. Not happy with just customizing your look? Take your eye for design to your ride, and customize your vehicles with new rims, grills, decals and more. But my favorite customization, hands down, has to be the Death Tunes. APB comes with a surprisingly deep music creator that players can use to customize car sirens and other in-game sounds, but Death Tunes are more like musical death rattles - songs that play when your character dies. This was displayed hilariously during a rather intense gunfight, when a female Criminal was blown away, only to trigger Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust".
Pick a side, make your mark
In the world of APB, players are asked to fill the shoes of either an Enforcer or a Criminal. But don't think of this as your typical good cop/bad cop; the only difference between the two factions? One carries a badge. APB boasts in-game match-making, so if you're a Criminal trying to jack a car and a pedestrian spots you, they might call it in, informing an Enforcer to come and deal with you. In fact, there are no lobbies in APB at all: you hit the ground running, and the game only starts once someone's committed a crime. Thanks to the automatic match-making, APB also puts a huge emphasis on PVP combat, as players will never find themselves fighting hordes of AI enemies - only other players. Missions are offered in the typical fashion, allowing players to meet up with NPCs and receive objectives - but one of the most interesting aspects of APB is the Open World Activities: missions triggered by in-game actions.
While players are matched automatically for PVP action, more trigger-happy players can log onto one of APB's many "Chaos Servers", where there's no match-making at all: just pure deathmatch chaos. In fact, each "server" in APB is actually a city in itself, and each city is roughly the size of cities found in GTA or Crackdown, giving players plenty of room for high-speed pursuits, enormous gunfights, and sandbox exploration.
And the cherry on top? There's no monthly subscription fee to play APB. A firm believer in "software over subscription", Real Time Worlds will be releasing APB as a standalone title. Expect to see APB: All Points Bulletin hitting shelves next year.
