All Points Bulletin
To be quite honest, I was very disappointed with GTA4. I wanted SO MUCH to try out the multiplayer part, but due to horrible and still unfixed software issues I've totaled exactly 0 seconds of multiplayer so far!
Just as well, actually, because I would probably have had a hard time finding someone to play with except the cheaters that were running rampant in that game for a while.
So, much to my pleasure, APB was announced! It looked like it was everything I had originally hoped GTA4 Multiplayer would be, and more!
I followed the building hype during their development and testing phases after I got wind of the project, and pre-purchased with an odd sense of glee.
Now that I've been playing it for about 40 hours I feel up to typing up a little about what I feel about the game so far.
Customization
I'll open with this as it's The Biggest Hype about this game.
I can honestly say I've never ever seen two characters that look the same. Sometimes they're close, but if they are, it's on purpose with some kind of clan uniform.
Up close, however, you can clearly see that the characters wearing the uniform are completely different.
While refreshing to have a unique identity in the game, and really cool to customize my van so it looks like the A-Team van, this gets sort of old for me. I want to play a game, I don't want to play with dolls.
Logging in and all that
Usually, logging in is not at all a problem. Loading the characters, too. No problemo.
Loading a district, however, is oddly slow the first time. After that it's cached, so it's way quicker, but it still has a "meh-factor" to sit and wait while the district loads for the first time.
District size
There's been a whole lot of talk about this on the web. Some people are in the "...but the districts are so detailed, they don't need to be big!" camp, some are in the "...but this is like a fifth of the size of the first island in GTA4".
I'm somewhere in between. The districts are an OK size, and they are excellently detailed. I would actually like them to be slightly less detailed if it meant it wasn't so dense. Things are a little cramped so it's hard to get around properly.
District number
There are three districts.
Well, two and a half districts, actually. One is a small Social District where everyone hangs out around the customization kiosks or the e-mail machine.
The two action districts, Financial and Waterfront, are where the actual game takes place.
Honestly, I think that two districts are enough. I mean, look at games like Modern Warfare and the like. There are usually two maps that are super-popular (Overgrowth, anyone?) and then the rest are sometimes included for variation. So I guess I don't mind that there are "just" the two districts.
Game balancing
Oh boy have there been a lot of whining about this! THE N-TEC IS OVERPOWERED!! THE STUN WEAPONS ARE OVERPOWERED!!
I don't think so. The balance seems fine to me. I suck at the game still, so I get my ass handed to me, but that has nothing to do with the guns I use.
What is a little broken, right now, it's...
Matchmaking
I regularly get matched with players more than three times my Rating. That means they have three times as much experience and maybe even three times as much game time as me.
How is that a good match?
There's a patch coming, supposedly, that looks into this, but we'll see.
Missions
Holy crap, talk about a can of worms!
Yes, there's only a few missions, maybe 10 of them for each sub-faction, making it ~40 missions overall.
This, however, does not bother me.
How many missions are there in CounterStrike or Modern Warfare? Besides, the missions are only there to give you something to fight over. What you're there for is the fight, and that's always PVP, and almost always interesting, if the matchmaking doesn't crap all over your fun.
So, you get a "Steal this, then deliver it there, then kill whomever comes to mess with it." It actually works quite well for me.
Yeah yeah, but is it fun?
It all comes down to one little point: Are you alone?
The game is a huge yawn if you're alone, but with a group of friends, it's a hoot.
I roll with Storm, a little group of maniacs that are all about the fun factor. I've had some huge bundles of fun with those guys.
Sure, pick-up-groups are fine, too, and even just cruising around until you get a request for backup can be fun, but a persistent group of friends to roll with should be the very core of your game. Just bully your friends into joining you.
This is, after all, why it's a Persistent Online Shooter.
Final verdict
There is no such thing for a game like this. They keep developing it, hopefully, so it's never quite finished.
For now I'm liking it quite a bit!
One problem, however: They're out to found a new genre, the Persistent Online Shooter, but nobody ever stopped to reflect that it would share an acronym with "Piece Of Shit"?