Nettacki
Since: Jan, 2010
12/06/2011 00:00:00
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It's the shooter you've all been waiting for! Sort of...
I had a lot of high expectations for APB. After hearing about its three-month long run time before it got shut down by Realtime Worlds, I was pretty disappointed, because it looked really well. Then I heard that Gamersfirst was bringing it back, and I jumped for joy. Months and months of advertising and hype-inducing trailers went by, until the release day came. I made a G1 account, installed Gamersfirst Live, and finally started installing APB: Reloaded (which took almost all day to install). Once I got into APB however, I was underwhelmed. I'll exlpain.
Gameplay could use a lot of improvement. Cars feel heavier than they should be, and control very floaty (think Halo 3). Steering vehicles has a one second delay, often making you miss turns and crash into walls when you're trying to pull off stunts or go into alleyways. Walking, running, sprinting, and climbing over things feels fine, and it's actually fun to dash through alleyways and climb over fences as you attempt to escape your pursuer. However, APB was optimized for 64-bit operating systems, so most of the people out there who use 32-bit systems have a lot of trouble keeping their framerate up, even on the lowest graphics settings.
Customization is insane. People have made The Joker, the guy from Hitman, Spider-Man, Batman, The Penguin, and other pop culture references/celebrities. Not to mention that people have made awesome original designs of themselves. The problem is that when you start, somewhere around 90% of customization options are locked, and there's little to no explanation of how to unlock them.
The big thing that APB boasts is its "matchmaking" system, where it teams up opposing players based on their threat level. The big problem here is that the matchmaking system is abysmal, often pitting low-level players against much higher-level ones, resulting in getting killed over and over again, lowering their threat level, and getting a poor reward at the end of the mission.
In conclusion, if you're the kind of guy who can play the same game of cops n' robbers over and over again, and you have a lot of patience, then APB might be for you. But trust me, there are better shooters out there.