APB Forums

APB or All Points bulletin, is an ‘on-line persistent shooter’. Some people generalise this by saying ‘its like GTA but online’ well… i say that anyway. To be completely honest though, it isn’t. The game features elements that make it like the Grand theft auto series or Saints row: you steal cars, you cause havoc and you shoot at police (if you’re a criminal). But that is really where the comparison ends.

The game was not received well by the gaming media, whether this was from the game being over-hyped as an ‘online gta’ or if it was just not to the standard they expected but one thing is for sure and that is that the gaming public seemed to have taken on their comparisons very seriously. 

One such instance was a recent discussion on the official forums which made me cry for the stupidity of the general public. Well stupidity may be a bit harsh but very mis-informed about the development of games at the least. It was a discussion about how the game did not feature many of the aspects or mechanics that they wanted the game to have. It focused on things like how it only has a small number of weapons, very little gore and the inability to shoot people who were inside of cars. This itself wouldn’t have been such a horrible post to see on an official game forum but all it seemed to do was compare APB with the GTA franchise and other games such as counterstrike. 

Now as someone who has been studying the development of games the past 3 years i have gained probably a bit more insight than the average player, but it still bugged me that people did not seem to understand that just because you have features in an single player game doesn’t mean they should be as standard in any such game. In all credit to some of the replies they understood massively on-line games have limitations to hitboxes, AI and often have balancing issues with weapons. The general mood of the discussion however was that the game was lacking in features they expected because they had played GTA or Saints Row, and demanded that they should be in the game without any regard for the effects of what they might have on a massively on-line game.

All points bulletin is an achievement, it is the very first step of the games industry towards a really great on-line game. i’m not here to praise the game but it has got to be acknowledged that this game incorporates so many play styles into a persistant world rather well. The game to some feels ‘clunky’ but what pioneering game doesn’t? Yes it had problems with car mechanics and weapon balancing, but what other online persistant mmo fps hybrid games can you think of? Not many is the answer. So to compare this game and what it has or hasn’t got with a single player game is just plain rude or ignorant. 

On another note, in a recent discussion with one of my friends we determined that APB could well be the ‘Everquest’ of this style of game and that soon another game will come along and be the ‘WoW’ that this new genre deserves. Maybe it will be Rockstar that makes it, maybe it will be someone else, but the point is that this is certainly a genre that needs more discovery and refinement before a truly beautiful game is created. Well done RTW, for pushing the boundaries to create a game that was a long time coming, well done.

Oh. And what do RTW get for making this game and having APB slated by reviewers? They went into administration. Blame goes to bad reviews and no tax breaks.