APB: All Points Bulletin

After playing for months in the Beta I have to say while I was impressed with the detailed customisation and the in game editing tools... the actual gameplay seemed to suffer, too much emphasis on customisation and not alot on balance and smooth gameplay.

The driving and combat usually feels slow and/or clunky and not very fluid and more times than not you end up shooting the wall infront of you rather than around it.

As for the balancing, Enforcers have a clear advantage over the criminal players in combat in general, and as a new player against more experienced people, you will usually find yourself constantly getting smashed unless you rank up enough to get more upgrades so you stand a chance, its a game of whos got the best upgrades, not who's got the best skill.

I have been playing the Key to the City demo and although I only got 5 hours :-( this game is AMAZING!!

A lot of people are saying it is GTA online, but they are SO wrong it is much, MUCH more! There first hour or so I thought it WAS GTA online, and then I found The game ships with free editors to let you build your own clothes, cars, tattoos and even music! But where it really shines, is when you start to team up for intense online group battles, you can even steal cars and ride together, shooting out the windows in the same car when on missions. I can see this game just getting better and better as the game play is determined by the players! I have been waiting for a game like this for SO long and now it is almost here.

If you have a chance, jump in on the free demo now...I am sure you will do what I did and pre-order straight after!

After playing the beta and putting over 100 hours of game play over the mouths I have but one thing to say.... Fantastic

Not only can you spend multiple hours editing your cloths cars and tattoos the game play has so many different aspects to it its hard to say over text. You have to experience the game play to really appreciate what RTW (real time worlds) has made many people said it was GTA it looks like GTA but is a totally different game in more ways than one.

however there are some downfalls to the game the missions are many team based so if you have no friends on the game... make them fast as you will have hours of fun riding around in a SUV shooting at random and getting the enforcers after you or if you decide to be enforcer sit back relax and just wait for the call to jump into action

Maps it comes down to two The Finical and Waterfront both are so vast they could be the size of some GTA ones also there is social that is where you customize everything.
If you enjoy total carnage this game is for you its a fast paced game and Im sure you will all enjoy it as much as I have over the closed beta stage and I hope to see many people when the game comes out.

Despite what the other reviews has said i have clocked up over 300 hours of game time and i have seen what i 'suspect' to have been 2 cheaters, there are a lot of GTA players i suspect who are trying this game out and have not really seen 'real aim' so to speak and blindly acuse people of cheating because they got killed. Alas you will get that with any online skilled based game.

The game relies heavily on teamwork and you would find it much more enjoyable if you played with friends or joined a gang straight away. The graphics are nice, customisation brilliant and kill theme is my personal fav. The core game mechanics are what make it so playable and fun - as the devs used the counter strike model as a base. Just needs more fluff. The most fun i've been having in a online game in ages!

Also you can buy in game time with ingame money using RTW points so you don't have to even pay for a subscription!

This is a very fun game to play. I agree with a previous reviewer that it is centred around teamwork (though you can go solo if you prefer). One point to clear up first of all is that once your preliminary 50 hours game time runs out, you need to pay for realtime world points which you can then exchange for game time. To get 30 days unlimited access, it costs 7.99.

Pros include; a great social area where you can customise appearance, clothes, tattoos, cars etc. It even has a facility where you create a basic tune that your opponent hears once you've killed them (I can't count the number of times I've heard beverley hills cop when I've died!). You can import you're own music collection to the game, but please note it has to be saved in the MP3 format, in other words you cannot import directly from the standard i-tunes format. If you play a song in your car which other passenger do not have, last.fm streams a similar song to them so that they can hear the same genre.

Cons; graphics are not great, but decent enough for an MMO game. Police enforcer stun guns are quite irritating as you will be stunned for a considerable length of time. Intermittent problems with the servers have caused lots of people to get kicked out of the game when trying to change lobbies or even alter appearances. As previously mentioned by someone else, you do have to play through for quite a while to unlock things. After 10 hours of play I have unlocked very little, but then again that's all part of the challenge.

One final important point is that if you intend to play this game with friends, then keep in mind that once you have selected your game world/server, you can never change this! You need to make sure that your friends all select the same server and faction (criminals or enforcers) at the beginning.

Hope this review helps and doesn't put you off. For it's faults, it is a very enjoyable game once you land in a steady group of players.