APB: All Points Bulletin

What is APB?

“An all-points bulletin (APB) is a broadcast issued from one US law enforcement agency to another. It typically contains information about a wanted suspect who is to be arrested or a person of interest, for whom law enforcement officers are to look. They are usually dangerous or missing persons. As used by US police, the term dates to at least 1960.

-Wikipedia

APB (All Points Bulletin) was a game developed by RTW (Real Time Worlds) based in Dundee. The mind behind APB was David Jones, who is also a known for contributing to Grand Theft Auto, Crackdown and also establishing Real Time Worlds.

APB is, or maybe was, a 3^rd – person shooter in a sandbox environment. Just imagine GTA but with players being able to play both as enforcers or criminals. The idea is basic, bad guys doing bad stuff, good guys are there to stop them. What made APB distinct from “just another” shooter game? Well, I'll tell that later on, but first let us talk about San Paro, the city of sins were guns talk first.

San Paro

San Paro was divided into three districts. The first one was the social district, were everyone could go there and instead of shooting each other, they were just shooting the breeze. Social district gave the opportunity to players customize their characters and cars, sell items and what else... socialize!

The other two districts were the action districts. Here is where all the conflict took place. Both Waterfront and Financial districts were turned into a big battlefield between criminals and enforcers. It was just anarchy! Explosions, cars going mad, gunshots! In every corner of the street you could see people fighting each other!

They say that big guns come with great responsibility, but in San Paro, big guns come with style!

Have you ever imagined how would you like to be if you were a bad ass criminal or a prestigious enforcer? If you answer “yes” to that, then APB could make it true. The customization level of APB was so deep, that you could do everything you could imagine!

If you thought that this would stop to character creation then you are wrong. Characters is just the beginning. In APB you could customize your cars, clothes and even create your own symbols and stick them wherever you like, even as a tattoo.

APB's customization was a great selling point. At least for me, who I always try to be different than the rest in a digital world. You cannot imagine how many thing were created by the community. I must say, the quality and the detail of some symbols where so great that you could not believe it was made by only the basic shapes that the designer provided, but they just damn did!

Right, you got the cool tattoo, the cool T-shirt, your cool car and a gun. But how well can you use it?

Combat

APB is not only about style, but it's also fighting for your side. Combat might be the most criticized thing about APB. It was nothing new as a 3^rd – person shooter. Hold a gun, press right click to zoom in over your shoulder, take aim and fire. Basic stuff. The lack of specific hit boxes (i.e. hitting the head would make no difference than hitting the torso) was a major drawback for APB. On the other hand, this style of gameplay did indeed promote group play. Instead of having a person taking on 5 opponents with ease (see Call of Duty) because he is faster or better at aiming the head, you had a group of four people working together to bring down an enemy team. Of course, skill indeed took place in APB. You could easily see the difference of a new player and an experienced one.

In APB the variety of weapons were not so great, but they had great impact on your fighting style. You like it close and personal? Then take the shotgun! You like it far away and invisible? Then take a sniper! This together with the group play, instantly means that a successful team must be prepared to fight in every kind of environment withing the town. The game was so dynamic that you might be fighting in a alleyway and the next minute on a high way road. Good distribution of the weapons and coordination to have the right man on the right place was the key of winning in APB.

So in other words, to survive in San Paro, you must get the right friends to tag along with.

Clans and Group Play

Whats better than having good company and enjoying a game? Well that was what APB was all about. The sandbox nature of APB and the fast action generated so many epic random moments that you could no hold yourself and just burst into laugh! Of course sometimes instead of laughing frustration would come around when things did not go well, but in the end it's natural for a competitive online game.

However, when you were alone and without a group things were pretty boring and dull in APB and frustration was quick to draw. For me, this was the biggest minus for APB. I must admit there were some days that I would log into the game, and if I could see none of my buddies or clan mates online, I would just log off.

Needless to say, Clans were one of the most important things in APB. If I haven't met those guys in MetalHeads (my clan), then I would have missed all this experience called APB (Thanks guys!).

And what if I had another day in San Paro...

Conclusion

I believe anyone in the game was gutted when it was announced that the servers were going down for good. It was on so short time after the official release of the game, that you actually had spent more time in the BETA rather than the released game.

And here we go, after APB closes, everyone goes like “This game has great potential, but...” and they are damn right. This game even at its latest state before the shutdown was fun. People did actually enjoy it and loved this game. But still nothing we can do about it.

There are rumors that APB has some buyers after its administration and they potentially think to revive the game. But to be honest, the buyer might be more interested into the customization tool rather than the game itself.

APB was one of the games that if you were hooked up with, you would hard forget about it. So the only thing that is left to do, is to just wait and hope that in the near future San Paro will be once again filled with criminal scums and enforcers trying to stop them.

Hope you enjoyed your tour into San Paro

Stathis “Roiku” Aposporis

UPDATE

San Paro will lιve once again! GamersFirst games bought the rights (IP) of APB from what remained of RTW. This project will be renamed APB:Reloaded and it will use the main concept from the old APB and also they are planning to add more content. The new company will use a free to play model (f2p) with micro-transactions.

Personally I'm really happy to hear that APB will come live again, but I totally dislike the whole micro-transaction concept. I will not explain this on the current post, but I have mixed feelings about this news. Lets hope everything turns up well!

See ya soon in the streets of San Paro!

Roiku