backseatdev

This week I jumped in the beta event for All Points Bulletin.

If you just imagine an online version of Grand Theft Auto, you will be pretty close to imagining this game. The game runs as instances of zones. 40 people from both Enforcers (loose moral police) and Criminals on each side in an instance.

The game graphics do not impress, but they are not too bad. Everything about your character, its clothes and its vehicles is customizable and the customization is actually quite impressive.

The gameplay is fun, especially when you have a few friends. Grouping with them is easy and missions get applied to your group. Level difference doesn’t matter, anyone can combine for groups. So you get your buddies in a group, jump in a car or two (1 driver, the rest in the car or hanging out the windows with their guns ready).

The mission system is great! Everything has stages and missions tie together. For example, a dispatcher comes up and it is a request for backup. You accept and you and your friends are suddenly brought in on another Enforcers mission. He is on stage 4 and needs to protect a building, but on the Criminal side, 4 criminals have been assigned to try to burn that building down. You get there, but the criminals wipe you. It flips to the next stage and the criminals are trying to escape. Now all the enforcers are trying to take them out before they escape.

It sounds complicated because in a way, it sort of is. People and groups get pulled into missions at various stages and both Enforcers and Criminals cross-paths almost the entire mission. There is almost no PvE aspects. When your playing, the complexity is not visible, you are just responding to dispatches and it is clear what you need to do.

The game does have some cons. At the very essence of the game, it is a fps. Unfortunately, it lacks the smoothness of a fps. After playing Battlefield BC2, it is frustrating to go to the clunkier GTA type interface for trying to fight players.

The other con is cost. From what I hear, it is $50 to purchase this game, $10 a month to play and you also buy currency from their website. Everyone I spoke to that tried the beta, enjoyed the beta and would love to try this game out for a month or so with friends, but the cost seemed wrong. It seems more like a free client type game where you pay per month or whatever. I would be surprised if the payment model does not turn into that within 6 months.

Gameplay seems like it would get old fast. Perhaps it was just the beta, but there seemed to only be a couple different mission types. The game just seems like it would have a limited replay amount compared to MMOs.

Summary: I don’t see me jumping in on this game at release, simply because of the cost. My assumption is that it will drop drastically in cost and at that point, if I can find some friends to ride shotgun while I rid the city of crime, I will consider it.

Cheers,
Tyanon.