APB at a Glance

Alright! I'm finally posting!

Right now I seem to be in an MMO slump, over the past half year I've tried out the following games: Left 4 Dead 2, Allods Online, APB (beta), Aion, and now DDO. L4D2 was probably the longest lasting game, something I played almost every night for almost 2 months... However, unlike the first game (which lasted me almost half a year) I don't have a set versus team to run with all the time, and any MMO player knows that pugging = ultimate fail at times. It's not really an mmo, but a shooter - and its great to play for an hour or two.

All Points Bulletin
So I closed-beta tested this for over a month, playing every few days. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this title, it is more or less a GTA mmo. It's developed by Realtime Worlds, who are known for their console title, Crackdown. There are pve/rpg elements in this game (you do missions to progress) but the main gist is pvp pvp pvp. All of your missions are vs other players, there are no true pve encounters. Since its a pvp/shooter game, it relies heavily on having a good (aka not laggy) system and stable servers. Since I played on the EU servers I always had a ping above 200ms - so my views on server stability are probably skewed.

The customization this game offers is pretty amazing! Personally, I spent maybe 20 or so out of the 90 hours played in the social district just playing around with making new outfits and cool looking cars. I saw some really creative original designs, as well as almost-perfect replicas of well known idols. The game also rewards you for spending time customizing, as higher levels of "fashionista" and "tuner" unlock new clothes / car parts respectively + give you a lump of cash.

The game mechanics is where things fell short for me. I believe this is great casual game, almost like L4D2 where you only pop in for an hour or two a day. The more people you have in your group (cap is 4 players, there is a LFG tool) the more fun it is - as you can have a designated driver and 3 cronies hanging out of the windows shooting at others. But... that's about it. I did not have fun playing this game solo, and it wasn't incredibly interesting in a group of 2 either, as matchmaking is a bit wonky and will match you unfairly with no option for backup. VOIP is a must (in my opinion) in this game, so you can come up with strategies to keep your team's casualties low. Also, when the general population has time to progress (give it a month) and they have access to the best guns and upgrades - prepare to die (and be frustrated). A lot.

The biggest disappoint for me, during beta, was devs not communicating enough with beta testers. They posted infrequently and did not address obvious issues beta testers pointed out. Even our suggestions threads, where hundreds of posts were made supporting a change that just, well, NEEDED to happen. Unfortunately bugs also got fixed very late, and many performance issues were not even addressed. They do listen though, which is fortunate... as our pleas for removal of manufacture fees (if you wanted to sell your clothes/cars on the marketplace you had to pay RTW points, something alike cash points, to make it sell-able) were addressed. But since they did things so slowly, it makes me hesitant to trust where they will go with this game.

For people who love shooters (like me!) this game misses the niche - there is no location based damage, so shots that hit your hand = same damage as shots hitting your head. Game controls are a bit sluggish, for example hitting crouch usually has a delay no matter how low your ping. Cover is hit or miss, as some of the lower "cover" places are smaller than the character so people can skim your head and you'll die. Weapons progress vertically instead of horizontally, ie you can upgrade guns to hit harder and hit faster, instead of giving options to specialize in a certain weapon type. There are no real scopes on the guns, they just have a set effective range... sorry snipers! (Although I didn't find that too difficult when I played a sniper, just there are no head shots!)

And for people who are die hard mmorpg fans, this game also misses the niche - the world is not immersive enough (some people will disagree with me). It's very very repetitive, wait for mission, kill people, collect reward, rinse and repeat. Its true each encounter can be different, but when many people do the same things (camp high areas where they have an advantage, camp areas with only 1 entrance, drive around town in a high speed car so you'll never catch up, etc etc) it gets boring fast. The social district, where you customize, should just be renamed to "customizing booths" since there aren't any real social encounters or events present. There is no real background story of why you're running around town shooting random people, or why civilians still live in such a dangerous place.

Speaking of civilians... the AI for them is terrible. It's almost hilarious - you can beep at them to get out of the way and they run right into your car. Way to go, suicidal citizens of San Paro!

Overall, I would say that this game is worth keeping an eye on - but not worth buying and paying a subscription. Yes... this game is asking for either $7 for 20 hours of action district time (no time is wasted while in social) or $10 a month of unlimited hours. The box price is around $50 at the moment, and comes with 50 hours of action time. I would buy this in a heartbeat if subscription prices were lower - right now I can't justify a monthly fee! Perhaps further down the line when they get more content it might be worth it.
p.s. the game doesn't look as horrid as my screenshots look, beta was limited to low/med settings