Bustin’ Crims in APB

Five hours in the city of San Paro.

Sitting in a cubical in Boulder, Colorado, I lay my greasy nerd palms atop a keyboard and mouse. I’m in the Realtime Worlds US office, where I was told most of the “business-side of things” happened. Behind me sat EJ Moreland, Design Lead, talking me through the introductory screen of APB. An online game of cops-and-robbers, APB is frequently compared to Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series. The comparisons are at first very obvious – regardless of whether you play as an enforcer (the law-type character) or a criminal players can hijack cars, attack (or avoid) pedestrians and cause chaos on the streets.

But that’s where the comparisons end. GTA is story driven, and the only buildings you can enter – in most GTA titles, anyways – are few and far between; they’re there to provide some sort of service. It works in GTA, but, for awesome firefights, sticking to the streets can get a little stale. The focus of GTA isn’t on the firefights, but it is for APB, and as I skipped my way through the extremely robust character creator and entered the game, the focus on gunplay is something I quickly learned.

Before I could start wreaking mayhem on San Paro – the city in APB – I had to choose between the two factions of enforcer or criminal. Each choice is accompanied by a short introductory video that explains in a nutshell just why the city is in a state of war and what each side is fighting for. For enforcers, the motivation is simple: earn a living by stopping lawbreakers, preferably by using non-lethal force, although the powers that be will turn a blind eye if things go awry. Criminal motivations are a little more complex, and are tied to the state of San Paro as a whole. As the rich become richer, the poor must take extreme measures to survive. Criminality has a certain allure for the prim-and-proper children of the wealthy, so they too feel the pull of a life without rules. As methods for dealing with criminals become more and more ethically questionable, the actions of the criminals they are trying to stop become more extreme.

And that’s where I stepped in. Wearing blue jeans and a white tee, the most basic attire, I began my life on the wrong side of the law. Normally, a series of tutorial missions will teach you the basics of gameplay – movement , aiming, etc. — but as my time in Colorado was limited, I forewent the lessons and jumped straight into the meat of the game. After selecting a character, players choose one of three different areas: The Social District, where you can buy vehicles and clothes, customize your character, and just hang out; the Financial District, a landlocked, roundish city filled with skyscrapers and surrounded by slummy regions; and the Waterfront, with ritzy restaurants, cruise ships along the coast, and a general touristy ambiance. The Social District is a combat-free zone, while the other two are combat focused.

Selecting a location brings up a map of the area, with a few spawn points to choose from. I chose the Financial District and picked a spawn somewhere close to the center of the area. I soon found myself within what appeared to be a garage, with a few other players standing idly nearby. I lurched forward, adjusting myself to the controls and immediately started taking gunfire from behind me. Another criminal was attempting to shoot me, but to no avail. As it stands, in the normal ruleset, players can’t directly harm each other – regardless of faction – unless they have been directly matched up against each other. Players who aren’t matched have their names grayed out, and their bullets pass straight through.

That’s lame, I thought to myself when I first learned of this. What’s the point of having other players if I can’t play with them? In practice, however, it is a very important aspect of APB. Here’s why: I would later pass a shootout between a group of enforcers and criminals – grenades and bullets flying everywhere. If I could be targeted by anyone at any time, the streets would turn to chaos. Shortly after that failed assassination attempt by a fellow criminal, I received a call from another. The call was put out to all criminals who fit within certain guidelines determined by the game, and I heeded it. An enforcer was out doing enforcery-type things, and it was my duty to try to put a stop to it. I set foot outside my underground lair and found myself staring at Memorial Park, occasionally obscured by passing vehicles. A woman in an SUV stopped at a red light in front of me, so I wandered over and hit my ‘F’ key to yank her door open. My character then punched the woman in the face and yanked her from the car as she yelled something in Korean. I felt a little bad, but I didn’t have time — my mark was on the other side of town, and the clock was ticking.

Driving through the streets I saw other cars racing past me on their way to other mission targets or in pursuit of others. Driving with WASD took some getting-used-to. Mouse movement only served to change the camera, unlike on foot where it changed my direction, and this shift in control was a little jarring. I found myself unintentionally running down pedestrians, and as I did so, a little bar – the notoriety meter – in the top right corner began to fill up. This meter serves to track your actions. As I accidentally laid waste to harmless civilians, I began to gain a name for myself, and as I reached level 3 (of 5), the possibility of a bounty being put on my head opened up. However, with higher notoriety, the potential for reward also rose, so by the time I arrived at my destination just behind the Concert Hall I would be receiving a slight bonus on any rewards I reaped.

My foe was standing behind a van, trying to defend a strategic point, and I had to try to kill him five times before the clock ran out. Of course, if he killed me five times, it would push to the next phase of the mission. This player was a somewhat significant threat, according to APB’s internal ranking system. His threat level was around 8 out of a possible 15, while mine – being on my very first mission – was on 1. As I closed in on him, highly decorated player-cars whizzed past. Sneaking closer, I began to open fire. My opponent responded in kind and in short order I found myself lying on the ground as my opponent’s player-made kill-song – a crude rendering of the Final Fantasy fanfare – played. Bummer.

I was outclassed. I chose to respond to a mission well above my abilities and I paid the price by dying over and over again. Even so, I was rewarded with some cash and increased my standing with the criminal organization.

Strange as it was, I felt pangs of guilt from all the completely fictional people I ran over, and decided that perhaps a life of crime was not for me. I logged out, whipped up an enforcer character and jumped into the Social District so I could turn my standard-looking squad-car into a love-mobile of justice. I painted it bright pink and slapped a red love-heart on the sides. Playing as an enforcer required a lot more restraint, as the notoriety meter is replaced by a prestige meter, and unlawful actions cause it to drain. That meant that I rapidly had to learn to not blow through five people crossing a road in my love-mobile. Of course, slaying criminals causes it to go up, and arresting them without killing them causes it to increase even further. Stealing a car makes it decrease slightly, although the real punishment came from an NPC who, after commandeering her vehicle, said to me “Y’know, this is why everybody hates you guys.” Ouch.

Sometime around hour three I accepted a mission to try to halt a group of four extremely high-threat criminals. I called for backup and tracked them to the hospital at the southern end of the city. As I pulled up, the whole crew drove past. One jumped out of their car and took me out in a couple of shots. My call for backup was picked up by four other players and, as the criminals raced through the streets, we coalesced at the mall in the west. There we tried to capture various points. The criminals holed up on an upper tier and laid waste to us. No matter which enter from, the crims were far more heavily armed and were able to hold down the fort.

Each district is built to support 100 players. Coming from a rather heavy MMO background, that didn’t sound like a lot of players, but even though I was playing on a server with about half the maximum, the game world never felt empty. Going on missions, 100 players was enough of a pool to draw from that there would be a good variety of opponents and allies, but small enough that if you played for a few hours, as I did, you’d get to know some names. One player I was pursing on a criminal-versus-criminal mission was later paired with me as an ally. He wasn’t the best player, and having killed him several times earlier, I feared he probably wouldn’t be forthcoming with the help. I was right.

Driving through the Waterfront as an enforcer, rockets whizzed past my car and fleets of cars passed me in both directions. Sure, they couldn’t directly affect me – for now – but they helped build excitement. When I got out of my van and entered a warehouse (there are quite a lot of enterable buildings) to diffuse a car-bomb, the rocket-toting crims drove past and blew up my van. Dicks.

Coworkers had seen APB at various events over the years and had told me there were numerous issues that were bringing the ambitious game down. While what I saw was certainly not perfect, I saw very few of the aforementioned issues. When I asked EJ Moreland about specifics, he told me “Yeah, we had issues. We had animation issues, server issues, lag issues…” But it was looking much improved. There were occasional hiccups – a little rubber-banding and occasional animation-skips, and little nit-picky things – trying to get off a ladder just a little too early causes you to fall off the building – but it was highly playable and even enjoyable. Realtime Worlds still has a little over a month before APB launches which is plenty of time for bugfixing, especially after the game enters open beta in the next couple weeks.

[Source]

Bustin' Crims in APB, 5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings