APB is the Counterstrike of MMOs [I Heart Games]

Screw your night elves and magic missiles, gryphons, castles and maidens fair. While those can be fun, they’re also… what’s the word… fucking overplayed. APB promises modern urban and military MMO fun that looks like a cross between Counterstrike and Grand Theft Auto.

Instead of being all about spending hours grinding, killing endless rats, six-legged crocodiles and boars, APB, from the Realtime Worlds, the makers of Crackdown, is all about getting out into the real world with a heavy arsenal and a hunger to win, kicking ass and taking names.

With fanboy talk for years about the “what-ifs” of a GTA-style MMO, APB has a lot to live up to and if the released screenshots are any indication, this game could be really something incredible. When Dave Jones of RW recently debuted APB, it looked like this:

Jones showed footage from the game, featuring characters fresh to the world—one thug was on an early mission, stealing a TV set in the default noob outfit of white t-shirt and jeans—and characters who were longtime APB vets. The MMO features “dynamic matchmaking” as Jones called it, essentially setting up player versus player missions on the fly. A three-player group of Gangsters were tasked with scoring some loot, then driving it to a safe point to complete their mission, a standard Grand Theft Auto-style mission set up. The moment the Gangsters crossed the line and broke the law, an APB was sent out to the game’s Enforcers, the cops to their robbers.What followed was essentially the MMO version of a Counter-Strike round, with players either driving their respective vehicles or engaging in a third-person firefight. The pair of Enforcers, two player pairs, responding to the all points bulletin eventually tracked down the bad guys, blocking them into an alleyway.

Jones said that these dynamic matchmaking battles in APB wouldn’t necessarily pit players of the same level against each other. He showed a clip of a group of new players, with just a single pistol between the four of them, being matched with a very high level Enforcer. He quickly took them down, but not before destroying their low level car with a rocket launcher. Who doesn’t like rocket launchers?

APB also looks to be big on customization– whether it’s your character, your car or your clan, there’s millions of ways to stand out from the crowd so that someone remembers you when you pwn them repeatedly.

Via: Kotaku