The past few days I've been drowning myself in APB goodness. Before this week, I've had no interest in APB, that is until I got my hands on a Key to the City. Realtime Worlds released tens of thousands of keys to various sites that allowed you 5 hours access to the Action Districts of APB. I was a bit bored the day all these came pouring over the internet, so I had plenty of time to nab one and download the game.
APB isn't your traditional MMO. It's broken up into districts, Action and Social. The Social Districts are where you customize your character, be it their clothes or their vehicle. It's also where you'll find the Auction House. The different between the Social and Action Districts is just what you would expect, there is no action in the Social District. You can see and speak with players of the opposite faction, but no gunfights will take place.
Which leads us to the Action Districts, there are currently 2 as of this writing. This is where you'll get your missions, earn money, and buy your weapons. As you may expect, there's plenty of action to be had in these districts. As you run about the map you'll receive mission offers and calls for backup. Accepting a call for backup will put you in a group with a player that was looking for well.. backup. You're able to call for backup when you're outnumbered by the players on the opposing team.
Let's talk a bit about how the action in APB really works. To start off, you can run around solo, but the game encourages you to group up. Honestly, I had a much better time grouping than running around on my own, solo missions lend themselves heavily to the "offensive team", which I'll touch on a bit later. Grouping, however, is just a blast. There's really no greater feeling than hopping in a van with your teammates and driving down the road with one sitting out the passenger window and with a machine gun in-hand and the other hanging out the side door. Yes, that's right, your passengers can shoot while you maneuver your vehicle, and it's a great feeling. Though at the same time it's a bit risky, if your vehicle is less armored than your opponents then you may be in some trouble, with multiple people shooting at a car it can blow up in no time. This is one of my gripes about the game, the cars don't last long enough. Customizing your own vehicle is a large part of the game, but I find myself using random cars on the street much more, because my car blows up so quickly, and it's such a pain to spawn it again that it isn't worth it unless you're between missions.
Back onto the topic of how missions work. When your team accepts a mission, another team (usually of the opposing faction) is accepting a mission to stop you. APB is basically a PvP third person shooter. One team has an objective (I.E: Steal a car, raid a warehouse, burn a building down, spray paint a wall) and the other team must stop them. The mission types are pretty varied, They range from holding an object until the time runs out to simple eliminations, and even car chases.
In essence, the action in APB is good fun that you can hop into for hours at a time, but it's not something you'd really want to spend all day doing.
The Social District is an entirely different world, and the customization in APB is phenomenal. You can make your own symbols out of the many given shapes and icons, and put them on your clothes. This may sound simple in text, but it's incredibly complex and it's just amazing to be able to put your own creations on your clothes. If you're particularly proud of a peace, you can manufacture it and sell it on the Auction House. You could sell the item of clothing itself, or you could simply sell a symbol you've created for other people to use on their clothing. It's very hard to put into words the insane level of customization you have here, I suggest you check out this video to see some of the amazing things you can do.
APB is quite different than your average MMO, and as such it requires a different payment method. You can either pay for hours at a time (20 hours) or unlimited time for 30 days. However, this is only the time you spend in the Action Districts. Once you buy the game, you can spend as much time in the Social District as you want, even if you run out of time in the Action Districts, so I highly recommend switching to the Social District before going to the bathroom, so you don't waste any of that precious Action District time.
A few final complaints: The time it takes to load up the districts is more than you would find in your average MMO, however the actually loading screen is so incredible you likely won't mind. Also, they place restraints on 32-bit users. It doesn't matter if you can run the game at max settings or not, if you run a 32-bit OS it will only let you turn the settings up to a certain extent. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, but they only allow the player textures to go up to about 50-75% on a 32-bit OS, meaning what looks amazing in the outfit designer looks very blurry on your actual character. Doing some some googling I was able to find an indirect way around these constraints, so do some research.
All in all, I had not even considered APB as something I'd like to play until I actually sat down with it this week, and I've now pre-ordered it. It's not your tradional MMO, but it's got it's own genre. Action MMO. I've personally had a lot of fun with it and I have no doubt I'll continue to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment