APB: All Points Bulletin was originally released in 2010 as a retail game by Realtime Worlds, however the game wasn’t a commercial success and unfortunately the company went into administration, cue Reloaded Productions and Iceberg Interactive. The new owners of APB: Reloaded who have been tweaking and improving the game ever since.
The general gist of the game is your basic cops and robbers. Good vs Evil, – you choose which side you want to join and either cause as much havoc as possible as a criminal, or attempt to quell as much destructiveness as you can as an enforcer and earn money and rewards to “level up” as you go.
When you load up the game, after choosing your side, character customisation begins. It does seem a bit basic at first, but as you play through the game and earn some cash you can buy clothes, tattoos and change your hairstyle to fit. You can literally go crazy with your look (and I found out that most people did!). It adds some real entertainment to the game, after all, how can you not find it funny being killed by a giant yellow clown! There are tons of options, the game even goes as far as letting you wear a different fully customised sock on each foot. Of course there is also car customisation, which has almost as many options as your character, including the tone and style of paint, decals and any attachments that you want. You can even create a tune that plays every time you kill an opponent!
Missions are streamed to you every 30 seconds (roughly) if you’re playing on your own, or, if you are part of a gang, they are streamed to the group leader who then determines whether or not to accept said mission. I found the missions to generally start with you being told to go somewhere and pick something up, then you are told to drop it off, or, go and pick something else up. The mission lengths seem to be randomly selected, sometimes you walk round the corner, have to “investigate” something and bam, mission over.
Although this seems to be the general gist for new players as your notoriety isn’t very high, so frankly, no one gives a damn what you are investigating or picking up and therefore you have no opposition, no one there to shoot you for whatever it is you are doing. It has to be said, at times like these, APB is incredibly boring. However, when you are assigned an opposition, usually within the first few steps you take you can hear sirens going off and flashing red and blue lights (in my case as I played as a criminal), and the fun begins! Now not only do you have to complete your mission, you also have an opposing gang headed towards you to try and prevent you from completing said mission, and thanks to the matchmaking system, the fights are usually pretty close.
You have a choice of two districts, Financial and Waterfront. The financial district being down town and the Waterfront district being along the coast. Both districts are roughly of the same size and both can hold somewhere around 100 players. The maps aren’t fantastic but, they are well designed. You can’t really hide anywhere for large amounts of time and there is almost always a back path to sneak up on your enemies, there is also quite a lot of places to explore, which you don’t really notice at first.
The game’s soundtrack also deserves a mention. It’s fantastic, really fits well with the game. It has everything from death metal, to classical music – whatever suits your taste, and if you honestly can’t find anything that you like in game, you can import your mp3 collection and add it to the game. Your music is even streamed so that people near your vehicle will hear what you’re listening to, which is pretty neat!
Ok, so now for the extra’s. APB: reloaded special (boxed) edition comes loaded with extras, £30 worth to be exact. Contents included are:
- APC Reloaded Game
- One of four of the following weapons – Assault Rifle, Submachine Gun, Sniper Rifle or Shotgun
- Magnum ACT 44 “Last Stand” secondary gun (Available for every character on your account)
- “Cisco Z180” car (Available for every character on your account)
- 30 Days of Premium Account Status
The selectable weapons are not listed in the information about the Special Edition, after using the assault rifle, I can assume that each of the 4 weapons are the equivalent to a basic weapon with a single level 3 modification on them. After selecting one of the four weapons, the gun was available to both my Criminal and Enforcer character.
The secondary weapon is the ‘ACT 44 Last Stand’ magnum, which again, is a regular ACT 44 with a level 3 modification added to it (in this case a level 3 reflex sight) – which increases accuracy when moving at high speeds. As it is a secondary weapon, it isn’t really a big advantage over regular players that don’t have the special edition, however it is a nice freebie.
The Charge Cisco Z180 has a different look depending on your faction. The Enforcers have the ‘Ophelia Customs’ preset and Criminals are given the ‘New Cross’ preset. The car itself comes with three modifications – a level 3 Nitro Booster, which obviously adds a Nitro Boost to your car, a Level 3 Steel Plating, which reduces damage from weapons by 30%, however it also reduces the car’s maximum speed by 15%, and lastly, a Mobile Supply Unit, that works similarly to a Field Supply Unit in the back of your vehicle, however, it reduces the car’s cargo capacity by 3. This is a nice addition as attempting to get this particular model of car with three modifications would take an enormous amount of in-game time and money!
The 500 G1 credits are there to make you look at the ‘Arma Marketplace’. – Here you can buy all sorts of items. High level weapons are roughly 2000 to 4000 G1 credits. 500 G1 credits allows you to buy one or two character customisation items.
Lastly, the Premium Account Status, which includes the following benefits:
- Up to a 90% bonus to all Contact Standing (CP) Gains
- 125% bonus to all cash gains
- 20% discount at the Arma Marketplace
- 50% reduced cool down on activated abilities (Nitro Booster etc)
- Advanced access to customisation suites (50 symbols per Vehicle/Clothing item & 100 layers per symbol)
- Removal of in-game premium subscription advertising (which pops up at the end of every other mission)
APB Reloaded is fun at first, but I found myself getting bored at the repetition of missions after about 30 hours game play. There are other activities to do, but not nearly as fun, and the game really lacks from only having two city areas. Overall, the customisation is AMAZING and that on its own should get you to try the game, however in terms of replay-ability… put plainly, it’s boring and the game suffers from not having a wider variety of areas to play in. When the game has extra content released for it, then it will definitely be a game to pick up, but for now, even with the addition of the extra items in the special edition, it’s a bit bland.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
