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#Post#: 65--------------------------------------------------
APB REVIEW
DIR By: eba95
Date: July 25, 2010, 8:44 pm
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ones is the face behind Grand
Theft Auto I, II, and Crackdown. He ’s
the man who spent his career in the
Nineties churning out classic
Lemmings titles before becoming
the High Muckety Muck of street
crime games. For the last five years
he ’s been working to take this self-
styled gang warfare to an MMO
platform, but don ’t let the happy
Scottish face fool you: Jones might
have the smiling eyes of a kind uncle
but he ’s the guy who made a career
pin-pointing exactly what makes
crime so awesome. His games are so
reliably destructive and fun that it
only takes looking at his newest title
All Points Bulletin to ponder “Gee, I
wonder how many cars I’ll explode
this game?”
The studio calls Counter-Strike one of
its primary influences but the game
really is a flipbook through Jones ’
career. Like GTA you peel NPCs out of
their cars. Like GTA you ’re driving
through a modern-day city and
dodging bullets shot by the trigger
happy. Like Crackdown's Pacific City,
APB is infested with roving gangs
and putter-putter noises from
assault rifles. The place seems so
familiar it's like boarding a bus from
Compton and then getting off in the
rough part of the Bronx. Sure it's a
different state, but Christ, are you
sure we haven't been shot here
before?
It’s a shame that none of this is
actually gratifying in APB. The game
might dole out guns and free
vehicles but it also takes away the
most necessary attribute of any MMO:
incentive to actually play the thing.
San Paro is a PvP gangland with no
levels, no talent trees, no story, no
territory to claim or any legitimate
war between Enforcers and
Criminals beyond its shoot-and-drive
missions.
It’s an awkward attempt to make
changes to tired traditions. MMOs are
often reviled for the grind, the
perfunctory level system, and the
players to name but a few reasons.
And naturally APB tries to abandon
some of the genre ’s deadweight
tropes. So the traditional XP leveling
system is gone and replaced by a
ranking system of Notoriety and
Prestige; essentially it ’s a morality
rating that rewards you for playing
your role accordingly. A rank will rise
or fall depending on how successful
a Baddy is at stealing stash out of a
building, or how successful an
Enforcer is at picking up packages.
Unfortunately even as opposing
factions Enforcers are pretty much in
the same moral gray area as the
Criminals are. Baddies will drive
down a local main street in a stolen
ambulance like petulant teenagers in
a Volvo. Enforcers, APB’s vigilante-
justice force, drive down the same
streets in a 2-door piece of tin stolen
from a criminal during a previous
mission. The clearest difference is
that Enforcers are encouraged to
swerve when pedestrians
intermittently dive in front of their
vehicle and Criminals, on the other
hand, are meant to keep their feet
planted firmly on the gas.
The carrot on the stick is money and
weapons that you can accumulate
through hours of play. APB is asking
for your time, not your talent, so
where most games encourage you
to at least perform or hone a skill the
work you put into APB’s missions
doesn’t correspond to the reward
they give you. In fact, with most
objective points generated minutes
away from where you are, a mission
will have often already moved to its
second stage while you ’re still
diddling about in an intersection,
catching up to teammates who had
been closer to the objective begin
with. It ’s a strange and unfair silver
lining that you still get rewarded
regardless, along with the rest of
your team.
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5 SO-SO
Read the
APB
Genre: Action
Release date: Jun 29,
2010
Published by: WEBZEN
Developed by: Real
Time Worlds
Multiplayer Modes:
Xbox 360 Wired Game Pad
(Cable - Xbox 360)
Shop at Price
$37.99
$35.70
$39.95
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