The Tech Throwdown

Rating:

All Points Bulletin (APB) Review
By Jordan Davis

Welcome to a world of violence, chaos, and teabagging. No I don’t mean a political conference. I am talking about APB, the latest MMO by Scottish developer Realtime Worlds of Crackdown fame. The streets are full of rampant criminals and the Charles Bronson like vigilantes who are trying to stop them. An amazing amount of customization and play styles allow you to make up for the lack of unique skills and little variety of weaponry.

First off I will say that I love this game. Unfortunately it has a lot of faults; faults that may kill it if not fixed in the near future. Luckily the story line isn’t part of these faults. You start out as an Enforcer or Crim. Neither have a benefit over the other, which allows you to take part in whatever side of the law you choose without reservation. You follow a slew of contacts to receive missions and rewards and each contact is part of 1 of the two organizations. On the enforcer side you have the Prentiss Tigers and the Praetorians. Each provide unique rewards and unlock new items including guns, vehicles, tools, or clothing. On the crim side you have the Blood Roses or the G-Kings. These are the identical counterparts of the enforcer contacts. I chose to be an enforcer, and do my part to clean up “San Paro.”

The missions come in a few different varieties. You have regular missions that resemble others in the MMO genre. Pick this item up, take it here, defend this area, etc. I found I was given the same mission multiple times under different contacts, which was disappointing to say the least. However, due to having enemy players dispatched against you mid mission, they never really feel the same. Then there are bounties. Bounties are missions that dispatch you against criminals that have committed a crime in front of witnesses. Your goal is to kill them or arrest them multiple times. These are my least favorite missions as most times the criminals will just get in a car and run until the timer is out. These are similar to “dispatch” missions, that send you after an enemy during their mission. The third, and probably the most fun mission type are calls for backup. This means that enforcers or crims are already in a hunt, but require assistance. These tend to result in much larger, organized battles.

Leveling is a tricky concept in APB. Most MMO’s give you a standard for leveling and skill progression; APB is unique in this aspect, for better or worse. Each contact can be leveled up by attempting or completing missions. This unlocks special rewards. Each faction (or Organization) can be leveled up through various missions and killing high priority targets. Higher rank within an organization unlocks new weapons, vehicles, tools, and clothing that you can purchase from the contact. Then there is your rating. Rating is a reflection of your ability, missions completed, and various other circumstances. Certain items can only be used after reaching a certain rating. Last but not least is Prestige (for enforcers) and Notoriety (for crims). This is your rating of how good you are doing in the current play session. Once you reach level 5 you have a hit placed on you and can attack and be attack by any player of the opposite faction. Beware if you are a crim, because your own faction can try to kill you for the bounty as well.

There are 2 locations in which to wreak havoc upon one another, and one to take effect of the copious amounts of customization the game offers. These areas are called districts, and are separated into the financial, waterfront, and social districts. The financial and waterfront locations differ by a small margin, causing me to mistakenly turn into walls, thinking there are paths there that only exist in the other district. The city design is rather similar. The only real change is the different contacts, and a few unattainable ocean based views. This isn’t to say that it’s not beautiful at times, because it certainly can be, but there isn’t much distinction between the two. Imagine a world not as cartoony as Saints Row, but not quite as realistic as GTA.

The social district is much smaller, and has no combat, but is the only place you can make customizations to your character, vehicle, music, and logo. Most games offer a detailed character creator, but very few allow changes in the other parts of the game. You can design and detail your vehicles, making them unique for your character or unique to your clan. The music creator allows you to create your own theme to play when you get a kill or win a mission, mostly with 8-bit noises. There’s nothing like dying to the theme of Beverly Hills Cop or Zelda. You can design your own logo that will be spray painted, and if you are a top player your logo and avatar will be placed on a billboard in the social district.

Driving is an area of concern for me. A lot of the vehicles are incredibly slow, making it impossible to catch up to a bounty in a faster car. And the faster vehicles tend to have horrible handling causing you to crash into anything and everything. Although other players cant shoot your car if they are not involved with your current mission, they can crash into it. Several times I have been followed by someone I beat in a mission earlier that day, and they spend their time trying to crash me. This can become incredibly frustrating.

This kind of action does fall under the category of harassment, however good luck submitting a report. The few times I tried to report spammers or what I have dubbed “crash dummies” the APB support page in game will not load. Same goes for the knowledge base. So if you have trouble figuring something or a bugged mission, don’t plan on having any support from Realtime Worlds staff. Luckily most players in the district chat are willing to help out with any questions you may have about gameplay, leveling, or how the hell that guy took a whole magazine from an assault rifle and lived.

This leads me to combat, the most fun and frustrating part of APB. There are times you walk away feeling like a god, and others that make you start writing an angry letter to Scotland asking for $50.00. The guns lack precision, unless of course you have reached a high enough level to purchase guns with upgrade slots. These slots can be filled with anything from accuracy upgrades to extra ammo. Unfortunately the players who have these upgrades are at a huge advantage, making the missions against them incredibly frustrating. On multiple occasions I would have the drop on an enemy, shooting him from behind. Before it would kill him, he would have time to turn around either shoot me on the run or drop a grenade, killing me either way. When you are dispatched against a player this is forgivable, however when you are just trying to complete a mission and you die every time you come close to your objective, well, that might be enough to make you quit altogether.  However when you have a great round and demolish your opponents, the game suddenly feels more balanced. Interesting how that works, isn’t it?

One of the biggest problems with combat is communication. The few groups I have been in that used the in-game VIOP have succeeded with flying colors. If you don’t communicate, you will fail. It’s really that simple. The in-game VIOP has decent sound but beware, the game has it set to voice activation by default. That means if you have a mic plugged in and don’t change it, anyone on your team, group, or in your immediate vicinity can hear what you are saying.

So lets say you’re sold and want this game; how does the payment work? This is one thing I really like about Realtimes Worlds setup. First and foremost, a month of unlimited play is only $10, $5 cheaper that the normal MMO monthly charge. Also they allow you to purchase 20 hours of action district play that never will expire. So if you want to play but aren’t sure if you will have time this month, next month, buy 20 hours that you can use at your leisure for only $7.00. The last option is a neat addition allowing you to sell items at the auction for RTW points, in which you can spend on game time, therefore paying for your game with in-game actions. However that’s the one issue I have with the payment. You don’t pay directly for hours or unlimited monthly. You have to purchase RTW points, then apply the code to your account, then purchase the hours. Much like the Microsoft points setup. The first time I did it there was very little direction, and I had to guess where to go next.

Personally I love the feeling of being the cop. You rarely get to play the run of the mill good guy in games, and I am willing to deal with the problems to have that moment. So if you love the setting, and loved the online multiplayer of GTA IV then you will probably enjoy this game. If you are strictly a shooter fan, this might provide more disappointment than fun. My recommendation is to wait for them to release a 2 week trial (can’t imagine it will take them too long to do so) and test it first.

Minimum
 OS: Windows XP
 Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz or equivalent
 Memory: 2GB RAM
 Video: NVidia GeForce 7800 256MB
 Hard Drive: 15GB
 Sound: DirectX 9
 Internet: Broadband connection required to install and play
Recommended
 OS: Windows 7 (recommend a 64-bit operating system)
 Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad or equivalent
 Memory: 4GB RAM
 Video: NVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 512MB or equivalent
 Hard Drive: 15GB
 Sound: DirectX 9
 Internet: Broadband connection required to install and play