Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying about Leveling Up and Love Brass Knuckles, Creating Gang Symbols and Making Friends by Doing a Drive By.

The Other Stuff

When we first heard Realtime Worlds founder David Jones speak about how APB would compete in the MMO world without having any sort of RPG leveling, he said their plan was to look to Counter-Strike, which he considered to be one of most successful online games of all time. They wanted to have solid and addicting gameplay to compel their gamers to keep playing.

Did they succeed? Yes and no. The shooting isn't as great as we had wished. It often feels imprecise and cartoony. We're over circle strafing to get a kill. And since APB is an open world game, you'll be doing a lot of traveling, which is also not as much fun as many of the console open world games, including Grand Theft Auto 4 from two years ago. There seems to be a lot of edges for you to get your car caught on, and with no ability to grab onto a ledge and climb, traversing the environment can be a chore.

And, actually, they did implement a type of leveling, not for your character but for your contacts. Every time you do jobs for your various contacts you'll gain levels with them, which in turn unlock new weapons, cars, clothes and upgrades. The variety of guns is great, but we wished they unlocked a little faster, because a top level player is hard enough to beat without giving him a grenade launcher.

But here's the thing: they've ultimately succeeded in making APB a competitive and addicting MMO. The buy in that happens when you create custom items for your character and the bonds that are formed when you go rampaging with your unique gang overshadow the game's faults.

MMOs are rarely the games with the best gameplay in their given genre, but in reality, it's not all gameplay that keeps most people coming back to MMOs. It's the friends they've made and the identity they've created within the game. APB succeeds in doing this as well or better than any MMO we've played and the tools that you're given to craft a unique identity for your character and your group are unparalleled. So if you really like the massively multiplayer online part of MMORPGs, don't miss out on this one.