I foresee this game going F2P in the next 6 months. Its an instant gratification game, log in, customize the snot out of character, shoot some bad guys (or good) . Game over.
6.5 is about right for APB judged as an MMORPG. But it's not an MMORPG.
It's a game only runs on centralized company servers (Modern Warfare 2), with achievements and unlockable equipment (Bad Company 2, America's Army), and a side feature of extensive avatar customization (Brink, Battlefield Heroes).
APB is a shooter. The next generation of them, IMO. It's squarely in the place shooters have been moving towards over the last five years, and RTW has stolen a march on the competition.
As a shooter, I leave its merits to be judged by those who play those games. I don't. I just hope the tragic mis-marketing of APB to MMORPG players doesn't kill it in the crib. I may not care for it personally, but it's going in the right direction. It deserves to find its audience.
this is an awesome post. nice to see somebody being objective and having the ability to see value in things that aren't based on their own personal preferences.
the problem with it being panned by RPG players who shouldn't have expected to like it in the first place (and therefore, should not feel vindictively "letdown") is that there really IS NO existing MMOTPS market yet. real shooter fans GENERALLY ignore the MMO space since it has virtually nothing to offer them. the majority of those trying it were expecting way too many RPG elements and "progression" from it, because the only real MMO communities (at this time) are %99 RPG players. there are a lot of shooter fans out there that know nothing about it, yet a huge portion of MMORPG junkies knew about it, and too many of them got hopelessly (there was no hope for them to be satisfied) interested in it.
hopepfully the MMOShooter scene can finally now come into being and have its own news sites, communities, etc...... but that might not come about until a couple more games like this are released.
Obviously there are hardly any MMOshooter players, because there are hardly any MMOshooters!
I don't like a lot of the MMO(kiddie)RPGs I see on this site. Yet I'm not saying they should get their own community site too. APB lends itself quite well towards playing a character (role). Sure, it might not be an MMO in the true form (up to 100 players in one shard). But then many other games aren't either.
MMO or not the game can actually be fun if they keep suporting it and listening to players, i had some good laughs while playing it and in the end thats all that matters, to have fun.
This game has huge potential down the line. I can't wait to see what is in store. I've been gaming for a long time and I haven't really had that 'game', if you know what I mean. For some odd reason, this game just sticks to me. When it works, amazing things will happen. You will smile, laugh, cry, scream out in anger, relax, chill and cruise with your friends. I don't know what it is but I love it.
I agree with you list of pros, but your list of cons is dumb.
First off: Driving is a chore.
Maybe you should learn to actually drive? Because once I knew how to drive it was easy and fun, but I suppose you should be able to play uber driver right off the start huh?
Second: Plodding and Archaic Controls.
Okay, so no cover mechanic suddenly makes this game uber bad? Guess Planetside's controls sucks to, oh and so does Global Agenda's controls. Seriously, the controls were fine.
Third: Repetitive Mission Content. Okay... maybe you got this one right...
I honestly see a good number of people buying this. Those into shooter will buy this game and buying time is pretty much cheap. Compared to what you spend on a subscription like World of Warcraft and Aion Id consider it a steal. Besides what does and doesnt make a game an mmo. Just cause a playe doesnt feel it isnt an mmo doesnt matter. What the industry says does. A.P.B is and mmo because it has a 100 people playing at one time. It's not an MMORPG. It's not an MMORTS. It is although the first MMOTPS. Which their will be more to pop up later down the line. One they work out some bugs and and add a little more to gameplay. This game will turn out to be one of the best shooters on the PC in a while. Who know. This could be the way the next Unreal Series goes.
I agree with you list of pros, but your list of cons is dumb.
First off: Driving is a chore.
Maybe you should learn to actually drive? Because once I knew how to drive it was easy and fun, but I suppose you should be able to play uber driver right off the start huh?
Second: Plodding and Archaic Controls.
Okay, so no cover mechanic suddenly makes this game uber bad? Guess Planetside's controls sucks to, oh and so does Global Agenda's controls. Seriously, the controls were fine.
Third: Repetitive Mission Content. Okay... maybe you got this one right...
+1
The problem there is what mmo is'nt repetive. WoW=repetive. Aion=repetive. Everquest series =repetive. Thats all mmo lets just face it.
I agree with you list of pros, but your list of cons is dumb.
First off: Driving is a chore.
Maybe you should learn to actually drive? Because once I knew how to drive it was easy and fun, but I suppose you should be able to play uber driver right off the start huh?
Second: Plodding and Archaic Controls.
Okay, so no cover mechanic suddenly makes this game uber bad? Guess Planetside's controls sucks to, oh and so does Global Agenda's controls. Seriously, the controls were fine.
Third: Repetitive Mission Content. Okay... maybe you got this one right...
+1
The problem there is what mmo is'nt repetive. WoW=epetive. Aion=epetive. Everquest series =repetive. Thats all mmo lets just face it.
But there are different kinds of repetitive. There is the generic kind of repetitive quest/mission we all accept as a limitation inherent to the game genre in which the dynamic is the same (go kill x, go collect, go deliver, etc...) but the details are different, then there is the unacceptable kind of repeatable quests/missions that scale to your level and they call it "content".
I agree with you list of pros, but your list of cons is dumb.
First off: Driving is a chore.
Maybe you should learn to actually drive? Because once I knew how to drive it was easy and fun, but I suppose you should be able to play uber driver right off the start huh?
Second: Plodding and Archaic Controls.
Okay, so no cover mechanic suddenly makes this game uber bad? Guess Planetside's controls sucks to, oh and so does Global Agenda's controls. Seriously, the controls were fine.
Third: Repetitive Mission Content. Okay... maybe you got this one right...
+1
The problem there is what mmo is'nt repetive. WoW=epetive. Aion=epetive. Everquest series =repetive. Thats all mmo lets just face it.
But there are different kinds of repetitive. There is the generic kind of repetitive quest/mission we all accept as a limitation inherent to the game genre in which the dynamic is the same (go kill x, go collect, go deliver, etc...) but the details are different, then there is the unacceptable kind of repeatable quests/missions that scale to your level and they call it "content".
Truthfully thats World of Warcraft latest addition of patches felt like unacceptable kind of repition. Same on Aion though. I wand my godamn Tabula Rasa back damnit!!!!
Good review. The reason why I think APB sucks is because I looked at what the key features are supposed to be and realize how much they utterly fail.
1. Is it a shooter?
No cover. And saying "lol Planetside must have sucked" is pretty damn stupid. Way to compare a 2010 game to what...a 2003 game? In its prime, Planetside blows APB out of the water. You want to make a good shooter...make the game first person. We're PC gamers...not console gamers. Back to cover. What really got me going with APB was the fact I was tucked behind something and leaing out, yet I was hitting the wall in front of me. The person I was shooting at could still hit me and I died. If the person was a bad shot I could scoot out far enough and still get them. But finding that invisible sweet spot was pretty lame. And to the guy saying "we don't need armor stat go back to wow" I'd like to point to the cheezy weapon slot upgrade system thing. You see, games like CoD allow you to upgrade weapons but the base weapon without upgrades are usually just as lethal as the upgraded version. This is not the case in APB. You have the newby AK47 you will get smoked almost all the time by somebody with upgrades. I play CoD World at War starting out at lvl 1 I can still finish in the top half on each map with the lvl 1 stuff. So a shooter APB is not.
2. Driving
Cars are too easy to blow up as well. And not being able to shoot through glass is lame. Should I keep going? As to "elephant on ice" I think that has to do with how data is handled server side. It's very slow to respond. Gee Mr. Planetside mocker...funny how Planetside not only got driving down in large scale encounters...but also got flying down as well. If they do something to tweak the communication between client/server then driving might be ok. But for now it sucks. So...there's the 2nd feature of this game shot down.
3. Open World
Basically what RTW has done is create a system that more or less puts you in a 5 man instance but has you doing that instance while in the "real world" with other players around you. The fact there really is not anything outside of your mission that can impact you makes it a fancy way to do a 5 man instance . You're basically in your own little bubble within the city while on a mission. Make it all open world and put in a weapon lock system or something to stop nubs from griefing their own team. Or make a temp rating system so that if somebody does enough griefing there's a bounty on their head to be collected by people of the same faction. Not to mention the fact the game was sold as "100 player zones" and they couldn't even come through with that. Planetside....server technology 7 years ago....what?
4. Customization
I have to admit this is the ONLY place this game just kicks major ass. I'm driving 3 of my buds around and we see a van..you know the one...the child molestor van...with the words "Candy sold here" written on the side. As nasty as some might think that is, I laughed my ass off. Unfortunately getting a few laughs with my twisted humor isn't going to keep me paying to play this game.
5. Missions or Questing
Whatever they're supposed to be, they get old really quick. Outside of the missions there aint much to do besides sit in social making your avatar look like how you wished you looked in real life. And yes..the matching system sucks. Probably because they really don't have a choice when you only have 80 people on a map. Good luck fixin that. And yes the whole "kick the candy machine to get a prize" raid mission mechanic is pretty shallow game play.
tl;dr version: I hear people say "this isn't a typical game...it's something new." Then please tell me what the hell it is? It's not a shooter...it's not a driver...it's not a quester. Is it a "sit in social and make my avatar look like how I wish I looked in real life" game? If i want to play a shooter, CoD is better. Play a driver, tons of better driving games. Hell GTA4 driving is better. Quester? I don't have enough digits to count those. What is so good and different about this game that's supposed to make folks pay to play it?
You know why this game is better than 6.5? Because I don't have to to push the #1 key to kill the same thing over and over and over while watching a shitty animation repeatedly. There may be some repetitiveness to APBs gameplay, but every encounter is ORIGINAL.
Can WoW say that? No, can LOTRO? No.
MMORPG.com... you're institutionalized. If its not one of the Set Standard of games, then you rate it badly.
APB has THE nicest looking characters and THE nicest looking character creation on the market.
The driving is far from how you describe it. It just takes EFFORT AND SKILL to learn.
Pathetic review, absolutely.
So happy I'm not alone on my view on this review. :')
Having not bought the game yet (Due to money problems) but being one of those that has been waiting what seems like an age for it to come out, I can say that I am so relieved.
I am relieved by real people going against all these scary reviews that sound like they're not describing the game I've been waiting for.
I played in the beta but got too frustrated by the constant stunning. It just takes an enormous amount of fun out of the game. So, I'm with the ones that will be happy to see this game go under, even though it was a good try.
This game doesn't offer a First person View? They should be embarrassed of the guns in this game. Nerf Gun Arena blows these pieces of crap away. The magnums wont stop someone hitting them solid three times dead center heart, just wakes them up to turn around and spray ya with bb's. They were probably hoping a company would buy them out or gain attention for their talent. Which they deserve, they have talent developing the game, graphics, etc. The Gameplay sucks, thats all. haha. Crimecraft has a new video (new to me), featuring the weapons games like APB should issue.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
The game is awful. Too many unbalanced weapons, driving is somewhat of a chore but mostly its the scum community they allow to play. People allowed to have the nazi symbol on their arm and penis on their cars. Yeah thats gonna have a GREEEAT community. People have no real skills other than camping and using the most OP weapon at the time. This game would have zero chance if GTA or SR actually did an honest to god MMO. I will pan this game every chance I get.
The new APB:reloaded is very popular on xfire, there is always people streaming it on the live video section of it. I almost downloaded it but didnt. Hope it does well and they can add more content to the game.
Comments
I foresee this game going F2P in the next 6 months. Its an instant gratification game, log in, customize the snot out of character, shoot some bad guys (or good) . Game over.
Obviously there are hardly any MMOshooter players, because there are hardly any MMOshooters!
I don't like a lot of the MMO(kiddie)RPGs I see on this site. Yet I'm not saying they should get their own community site too. APB lends itself quite well towards playing a character (role). Sure, it might not be an MMO in the true form (up to 100 players in one shard). But then many other games aren't either.
MMO or not the game can actually be fun if they keep suporting it and listening to players, i had some good laughs while playing it and in the end thats all that matters, to have fun.
-Meow
-
This game has huge potential down the line. I can't wait to see what is in store. I've been gaming for a long time and I haven't really had that 'game', if you know what I mean. For some odd reason, this game just sticks to me. When it works, amazing things will happen. You will smile, laugh, cry, scream out in anger, relax, chill and cruise with your friends. I don't know what it is but I love it.
That's a good point about Global Agenda because I've had a hell of blast with this compared to the mehness of global agenda.
+1
I honestly see a good number of people buying this. Those into shooter will buy this game and buying time is pretty much cheap. Compared to what you spend on a subscription like World of Warcraft and Aion Id consider it a steal. Besides what does and doesnt make a game an mmo. Just cause a playe doesnt feel it isnt an mmo doesnt matter. What the industry says does. A.P.B is and mmo because it has a 100 people playing at one time. It's not an MMORPG. It's not an MMORTS. It is although the first MMOTPS. Which their will be more to pop up later down the line. One they work out some bugs and and add a little more to gameplay. This game will turn out to be one of the best shooters on the PC in a while. Who know. This could be the way the next Unreal Series goes.
The problem there is what mmo is'nt repetive. WoW=repetive. Aion=repetive. Everquest series =repetive. Thats all mmo lets just face it.
But there are different kinds of repetitive. There is the generic kind of repetitive quest/mission we all accept as a limitation inherent to the game genre in which the dynamic is the same (go kill x, go collect, go deliver, etc...) but the details are different, then there is the unacceptable kind of repeatable quests/missions that scale to your level and they call it "content".
Truthfully thats World of Warcraft latest addition of patches felt like unacceptable kind of repition. Same on Aion though. I wand my godamn Tabula Rasa back damnit!!!!
Good review. The reason why I think APB sucks is because I looked at what the key features are supposed to be and realize how much they utterly fail.
1. Is it a shooter?
No cover. And saying "lol Planetside must have sucked" is pretty damn stupid. Way to compare a 2010 game to what...a 2003 game? In its prime, Planetside blows APB out of the water. You want to make a good shooter...make the game first person. We're PC gamers...not console gamers. Back to cover. What really got me going with APB was the fact I was tucked behind something and leaing out, yet I was hitting the wall in front of me. The person I was shooting at could still hit me and I died. If the person was a bad shot I could scoot out far enough and still get them. But finding that invisible sweet spot was pretty lame. And to the guy saying "we don't need armor stat go back to wow" I'd like to point to the cheezy weapon slot upgrade system thing. You see, games like CoD allow you to upgrade weapons but the base weapon without upgrades are usually just as lethal as the upgraded version. This is not the case in APB. You have the newby AK47 you will get smoked almost all the time by somebody with upgrades. I play CoD World at War starting out at lvl 1 I can still finish in the top half on each map with the lvl 1 stuff. So a shooter APB is not.
2. Driving
Cars are too easy to blow up as well. And not being able to shoot through glass is lame. Should I keep going? As to "elephant on ice" I think that has to do with how data is handled server side. It's very slow to respond. Gee Mr. Planetside mocker...funny how Planetside not only got driving down in large scale encounters...but also got flying down as well. If they do something to tweak the communication between client/server then driving might be ok. But for now it sucks. So...there's the 2nd feature of this game shot down.
3. Open World
Basically what RTW has done is create a system that more or less puts you in a 5 man instance but has you doing that instance while in the "real world" with other players around you. The fact there really is not anything outside of your mission that can impact you makes it a fancy way to do a 5 man instance . You're basically in your own little bubble within the city while on a mission. Make it all open world and put in a weapon lock system or something to stop nubs from griefing their own team. Or make a temp rating system so that if somebody does enough griefing there's a bounty on their head to be collected by people of the same faction. Not to mention the fact the game was sold as "100 player zones" and they couldn't even come through with that. Planetside....server technology 7 years ago....what?
4. Customization
I have to admit this is the ONLY place this game just kicks major ass. I'm driving 3 of my buds around and we see a van..you know the one...the child molestor van...with the words "Candy sold here" written on the side. As nasty as some might think that is, I laughed my ass off. Unfortunately getting a few laughs with my twisted humor isn't going to keep me paying to play this game.
5. Missions or Questing
Whatever they're supposed to be, they get old really quick. Outside of the missions there aint much to do besides sit in social making your avatar look like how you wished you looked in real life. And yes..the matching system sucks. Probably because they really don't have a choice when you only have 80 people on a map. Good luck fixin that. And yes the whole "kick the candy machine to get a prize" raid mission mechanic is pretty shallow game play.
tl;dr version: I hear people say "this isn't a typical game...it's something new." Then please tell me what the hell it is? It's not a shooter...it's not a driver...it's not a quester. Is it a "sit in social and make my avatar look like how I wish I looked in real life" game? If i want to play a shooter, CoD is better. Play a driver, tons of better driving games. Hell GTA4 driving is better. Quester? I don't have enough digits to count those. What is so good and different about this game that's supposed to make folks pay to play it?
Having not bought the game yet (Due to money problems) but being one of those that has been waiting what seems like an age for it to come out, I can say that I am so relieved.
I am relieved by real people going against all these scary reviews that sound like they're not describing the game I've been waiting for.
I played in the beta but got too frustrated by the constant stunning. It just takes an enormous amount of fun out of the game. So, I'm with the ones that will be happy to see this game go under, even though it was a good try.
This game doesn't offer a First person View? They should be embarrassed of the guns in this game. Nerf Gun Arena blows these pieces of crap away. The magnums wont stop someone hitting them solid three times dead center heart, just wakes them up to turn around and spray ya with bb's. They were probably hoping a company would buy them out or gain attention for their talent. Which they deserve, they have talent developing the game, graphics, etc. The Gameplay sucks, thats all. haha. Crimecraft has a new video (new to me), featuring the weapons games like APB should issue.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
The game is awful. Too many unbalanced weapons, driving is somewhat of a chore but mostly its the scum community they allow to play. People allowed to have the nazi symbol on their arm and penis on their cars. Yeah thats gonna have a GREEEAT community. People have no real skills other than camping and using the most OP weapon at the time. This game would have zero chance if GTA or SR actually did an honest to god MMO. I will pan this game every chance I get.
The new APB:reloaded is very popular on xfire, there is always people streaming it on the live video section of it. I almost downloaded it but didnt. Hope it does well and they can add more content to the game.