APB:R, or ‘All Points Bulletin: Reloaded’ is a free to play game created by GamersFirst. It’s a massive multiplayer online game where the player takes the role of either a criminal, attempting to get notoriety and recognition from his/her peers, or an enforcer trying to become the most prestigious officer in the district. An easy way to think of it is imagine GTA‘s single-player, just online. There are a few differences, in that instead of going to people’s locations to work for them, you simply ‘pledge’ to them, and you can receive missions whenever you are ‘ready’. Then, the big difference. You don’t fight AI players. Infact, there is no AI in this game (Okay, apart from the pedestrians and drivers). Your enemies are always played by real people, and let me tell you. It takes things to a whole new level.
Graphics
A successful bank robbery is successful
The graphics on APB:R are brilliant. Especially for a free game. I’ve yet to find anything graphically bad. I did have a slight problem at the start, in that my character always looked Chinese due to the eyes, but a bit of tweaking fixed that. The cars have a nice shine to them, players look and move realistically and for the most part, even their deaths look pretty good (Although occasionally I found my player’s body flung across the entire map by a rocket, but hey!).
In the daytime, the city (Or district) looks pretty good. I’ve yet to find that feel that you can find in other similar games that make you feel like it’s a real life living and breathing location, however the fact that you are playing with real players definetely helps that. Stopping patiently at a red light and seeing three sports cars zooming past you adds variety to how the district operates. I don’t really notice the day/night cycle (I don’t mean I can’t tell the difference when it’s day and night, I mean I don’t notice it getting darker), which I guess they could improve on to make it feel more like a real life location that continues living regardless of what you’re doing.
At night-time, the district looks amazing. The lights are all lit up and it looks like a place to go for a good nightlife. Aside from the fact, of course, that you might get shot in the face or ran over by some criminals. Personally, I think at night-time is when the district really livens up. I’m not sure if there is something mental that just makes people become more exciting the darker the location is, or if it just looks that way, but it is definetely much more fun playing in the night-time. Not to mention that you can use the darkness to sneak up on your enemies. 😉
As I’ve already said, the game is pretty similar to GTA. You take part in missions to complete a series of objectives for money and notoriety/prestige. You can do this either on your own or in a team. It’s really recommended however that you play in a team, as your opponents can easily out number you, and sometimes there are multiple objectives (For example, raiding three houses) which are completed faster when in a team, which can help you to beat the enemy team (If you and your team are in fast cars and know the roads, you can easily complete objectives before your enemy even gets there).
Unlocks (weapons, clothes, abilities, effects etc) are unlocked by pledging to a person who will give you missions, and as you level that character up, you unlock things specific to that person. This gives the feeling that the game has a progression system (Going from the lower level missions to the higher level missions through a recommendation system). The way you progress to different people is when you max out a person, they will recommend you to someone higher level, and so on and so forth until you complete that district, then you can go and complete the next district. Some unlocks are unlocked just by levelling your own character up, and require nothing but personal experience.
Better take cover!
The group/team system for missions is really good, and I’m pleased that it’s how the game works. You invite other players (Or just wait for them to automatically join a group, hopefully yours) or join others (Or, yet again, wait for yourself to be put into another group automatically), and then all ready up by pressing ‘K’, then wait your instructions and complete them as fast and efficient as you can. Higher levels will make the mission much easier for you, as you (or your teammates) will have much more powerful weaponry, and probably just be better at the game in general. Not to mention faster cars. The districts are split up into ‘ranks’. Bronze, which is for new Trainees and low-ability players, Silver, for medium/casual players, and Gold, for more advanced/hardcore players. Bronze gives lower rewards, but are easier to complete, Silver gives average rewards and therefore has medium level difficulty, and gold has vastly harder levels, but gives much better rewards. Overall, the missions are the same, but in the different level districts, you’ll fight harder opponents, making the levels harder, and the rewards higher.
Cons
There are a few cons with this. Most of which can be overlooked/fixed, but it’d be nice to not have them exist. The first main one is the one you’ll notice on first play. Your character is ALWAYS linked to one single server/world. This is fine, but due to the next problem, it can be a serious issue.
LAG. There are two ‘types’ of lag in this game. There’s the normal, standard sort of lag. Either your network speed isn’t fast enough, or you’re too far away from the chosen server to get smooth gameplay (Fixed by deleting your character and picking a new server/world). Then, there’s the other problem. For some computers and networks, there is a driving-delay. It’s based off the way windows handles network queries from the APB server. It can be fixed pretty easily and after that it’s fine. It’d just be nice to have the fix pre-built in as a patch or something.
Overall though, APB:R is an outstanding game, I’ve racked up nearly 20 hours already, and I still feel like the game is brand new. A rare case, especially for a game such as APB:R. Not to mention it’s free, so it’s outstanding+1. You should go and try it out. Now.
Gaming Respite 