I recently picked up Grand Theft Auto IV, which is a great game in its own right. I never did Vice City or San Andreas, so IV is the first time I’ve been back into the GTA scene since GTA3. IV immediately felt familiar; there was no mistaking this is a GTA game, despite leaving the cartoonish-yet-not-cell-shaded graphics of the GTA3 series in favor of a grittier, more realistic look. I’m still not very far along in GTA4, but interestingly enough, playing it made me want to play Crackdown again, which I’d never completed last fall before my 360 came down with a fatal case of RROD. Crackdown always seemed… incomplete, for lack of a better term. It’s absolutely great but needs a little something extra. Probably the sandbox elements found in GTA. But the super-heroics in Crackdown are unlike anything else, and they’re a huge draw to continue playing and boosting my abilities.
Aside from some mods (hacks?) on the PC versions of GTA3, the GTA franchise has always been a single-player affair. Crackdown gave us two-player cooperative play, which is a blast. GTA4 upped the ante quite a bit with 16 player online, although I keep reading it’s a bit weak and has that “tacked on” feel. Hopefully I’ll get to give it a shot soon to see. Anyway, playing both Crackdown and GTA4 made me remember that the Crackdown developers, Realtime Worlds, are working on their next game, APB (All Points Bulletin) which will be an MMOG for PC and 360 (very possibly the PS3 too). So I did a little more research on APB.
[This preview on 1Up has everything you'd need linked, including awesome video footage -- check out the character creation! Vehicle creation is just as flexible. Think Forza 2 applied to both characters and vehicles.]
First, notice I specifically called it a MMOG not a MMORPG. APB is not an RPG; there won’t be any leveling nor grinding AI mobs. From the videos there will be AI citizens though, likely to provide an additional “living city” feel, and the reactionary AI in both Crackdown and the GTA games really helps for both fun and immersion. [Side-note: MMO devs, that is a good example of what we mean when we ask for better AI, not "vicious killer AI" like you seem to mistakenly think we mean. Make those NPC's react when Bad Things happen near them!]
Realtime Worlds has stated rather than relying on AI mobs to provide content, they’re using the “players as content” model. At its core, when you get past all the other stuff players can do in the game, APB is a PvP game. Cops and Robbers! Former (or current?) Bounty Hunters in Star Wars Galaxies may remember picking up bounties for Jedi players from Mission Terminals. APB is taking this concept a step further with simple brilliance: when a group of Robbers commits a crime, a call is sent to a group of Cops nearby to apprehend the Robbers. The matchmaking system looks at the size of the Robber group and will choose a similarly-sized group of Cops. No running to terminals anymore, you’ll get matched up on-the-fly.
APB sounds great and all, but I also can’t help but wonder if it’s enough to keep people interested? Sure, Counter-Strike (original and Source) have been going strong for a decade now, but CS doesn’t involve a monthly fee. Other than the ridiculously detailed character and vehicle creation system, will players flock to a whole new type of game that isn’t an RPG? Is PvP enough? Could APB’s PvP and drop-in game play succeed where Planetside failed?
I’m very excited about APB, it’s a big shift in MMOG paradigm, yet I’m also skeptical of its long-term potential. For non-persistent crime and driving games we already have Crackdown and the GTA series. Rockstar themselves have intimated that the thought of a true GTA MMO is “compelling.” When it comes to drop-in PvP there are literally hundreds of shooters out there that are free to play online. Consoles have some great driving/racing games — which is also PvP, just to be clear — though driving seems to be a dead genre on the PC. I’m just not totally convinced that non-RPG, non-persistent, drop-in PvP is enough to keep me entertained when I can do all that for free. I don’t “live” in shooters anymore because, while they’re intense and immersive and tons of fun, I can rarely do a single activity for very long. Even in MMORPG’s I flit around from place to place, activity to activity constantly. So here’s hoping Realtime Worlds gives us plenty of extra “stuff” to do other than just PvP.
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