Community Highlight: My Five Days as a Criminal

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My APB experience

Let’s start off with some history! APB, or All Points Bulletin, was developed by Realtime Worlds, and the game design was led by David Jones. Who is David Jones? He is the dude who created the original GTA. Oh, and Lemmings. He also founded Realtime Worlds, who developed Crackdown. APB was planned as early as 2005, initially as a PC and Xbox 360 title, and intended as the flagship title for the then-newly founded Realtime Worlds. Jones wanted APB to be what he always wanted GTA to be. You might think that with David Jones at the wheel and five years in development that this would be the greatest thing since internet porn. But now that it is out, is it? Or was those five years more of a waste that Clash of the Titans’ 3D? Read on to find out my experience with the game.

I would like to thank fellow community member TheBlueFabbit for donating a code to me. With that code I could make an APB account and download the whole game. When I had installed it, there were nothing standing between me and the fictional city of San Paro. I started the game, logged in and created a new character. Then I was asked if I wanted to be an Enforcer or a Criminal. The whole game is basically one giant Cops’ N Crocks, and the story that ties all this together into a game is almost non-existent. A few years ago the Mayor of San Paro was assassinated, and now his daughter is Mayor, and to reduce crime she made vigilantism legal. Now Enforcers and Criminals battle it out in the city, killing countless of civilians in the process. While in the Main Menu of the game you can hear the two factions deliver small lines of dialog every five seconds, and it didn’t take long before I got the feeling that the Enforcers were power-hungry bullies, and the Criminals where just trying to defend themselves from the oppressing Enforcers. So I became a Criminal.

Now the game sent me to the character creator. This is where the game really shines. There where hundreds of buttons and sliders you could play with to create your character. “Adjust breast size?” Yes, please. After playing around with myself for an hour (I mean my character, you pervert) my character was done.

Her name is Faith

The game now threw me into one of the two “Action Districts”. There the first real tutorial started. The first thing I noticed was that all the text was very small and hard to read. Since my account was a trial account, I had only seven hours to spend in the two districts, so I rushed through the tutorial, which even if I had slowed down would not have taught me anything. I was now free to do whatever I wanted. I walked up to a "Vehicle Spawn Machine" and spawned my custom vehicle. I got in and tried to drive out from the parking garage, but the steering was incredible unresponsive, and I ran over two pedestrians and flipped my car over. You see, all the information about my driving is sent to a server, and then sent back to me. This causes the driving to be very unresponsive. If you combine this with the frequent lag, it makes driving a pain in the ass. But I was willing to try again, so I high jacked a car that was driving by. This action caused my notoriety to rise to level 1. When I accidentally ran over two more pedestrians and crashed my car into a video store, setting off the alarm, my notoriety got bumped up another level.

Notoriety is like stars in a GTA game. The higher the notoriety, the higher the chance that another player playing as an Enforcer will be sent after you. After I recovered from the crash, a mission offer appeared at the top of the screen. I accepted the mission. Some small text in the upper left corner gave the mission "story" and told me what to do. But it boiled down to "Go to A, spray graffiti on wall, do the same thing at B, run over to C and stand in a circle while another circle fills up to take control of area, then do the same at D and E. Every mission is just another version of that, just replace "spray graffiti" with steal,burn or break in. Not very interesting. The thing that makes this interesting is adding the opposite faction into the mix. If you are in a group with other people, the opposite faction may be sent after you to stop you. That did not happen to me, but my notoriety was so high that an Enforcer was coming after me when I was done. I did not know what to do, and when he found me, I quickly found myself more dead than Bruce Willis at the end of Sixth Sense (Spoiler Alert). The other player was better equipped than me, and my pea shooter did almost nothing to him. I realized that I needed to upgrade my stuff.

After waiting for five minutes to connect to the Social District I was ready to pimp my gun, car and clothes. An entertaining hand painted cut-scene is played as a loading screen, so it wasn’t so boring to wait. The Social District is a place where everybody, regardless of faction, can chill out and customize their stuff. I headed straight over to one of the shops and bought some new guns, grenades, gun upgrades and a new car. With my arsenal now up to date, I got myself some food (in real life) and prepared to dive deep down into the customization aspect. Using the symbol editor, I created the Mirrors Edge logo, and put the decal on the roof of my car. My car was the default car, therefor I couldn't put on some sick spoilers and side skirts. The only thing I could change was the rims, but I had to unlock some first. With my MirrorMobile done I headed over to the music editor. This is probably the deepest and most complex tool. After I couldn't even make a simple drum beat I gave up. The only game that I have played that I can compare it to is MTV Music generator 2. If music editing is your thing, I would suggest you look up APB music editor on YouTube for more info. Speaking of music, APB has a impressive library of music, mostly metal, electro and hip hop. Artist like Pendulum and Rise Against are featured. You can even use your own library of music, and when you are in a car, other people who have the same music can hear your track from inside the car when you drive by. I played around some more with Faith, but adjusting body features now cost money. In order to get enough money for the boob job that Faith desperately needed, I hit the streets of San Paro again. This time I joined a group of three other Criminals, and it didn't take long before we got our first mission.

We needed to steal some cars, but another group of Enforcers had been dispatched to stop us, and they were now chasing us into an ally. The Enforcers had set up an ambush in that ally, and they quickly filled us with bullet holes. Five seconds later I respawned about 100 meters from the action, and instead of falling for the same trap again, I sneaked around the ally, climbed a ladder and 'naded one of the Enforcers camping on the roof. But like all hiding places in San Paro, there were more than one way leading to it. This is an effective way to prevent camping. But I didn't know this, and was quickly killed by another Enforcer. We lost the mission, but I got a greater reward from this than doing the missions by my self. I spent the rest of my time rolling with my group, sometimes losing, sometimes winning. I must admit I had fun playing the game, especially the customizing part, but problems like unbearable lag and sometimes too hard enemies kept me from enjoying the game as much as I enjoyed GTA IV's multiplayer. The game has a lot of faults, but I can see the potential, and like all MMO’s, it just needs time to settle down and iron out the problems.

If you are still reading, I know this was a mess of an article, but it is hard to cram 7 hours of multiplayer and 15 of customization into an easy to understand article. Also this is my first article ever. If you have any questions, or if you want to be a grammar Nazi or just complain about how I ruined the ending of Sixth Sense for you, drop me a line in the comments!

Written by: Atleer