Jones said at release that he expected APB to get mediocre reviews, and as you commenters expected, he's getting another one here. If APB was just another Grand Theft Auto clone, it wouldn't be worth a second look. But because it's an MMO, it still has that chance to improve and do better. The ad-hoc versus mission mechanic is ingenious, and that customization can be intoxicating, especially when you get a clear idea of exactly what you want your character and vehicle to look like.
Those things are worth experiencing, and hopefully if Realtime Worlds can narrow its focus and land some post-launch development right where the community needs it, San Paro will eventually be a place worth visiting.
From DevilsMMO:
'It occurs to me that the MMO, as it currently stands in the industry, is something of a hit and miss affair. The average gamer, equipped with a console and every shooter ever made, generally only ever hears about the very biggest MMOs or, failing that, the MMOs that manage to crash and burn the hardest.
This was brought back home to me last week when I received a comment on one of my articles in which the commenter believed most MMOs are destined to fail, and fail quickly. Rather than take that statement at face value, I’ve been thinking through why that would be; what makes a game that has had thousands of hours of development hours plugged into it just fail?'
Scotland-based developers Realtime Worlds created the critically acclaimed Xbox 360 title, Crackdown. They seemed to have a bright future ahead. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case...
Splitkick: “What the hell happened?” That was my basic sentiment after playing about two hours of Brink on my PS3. I left PAX East 2011 proclaiming Brink my “game of the show” after playing a hands-on demo, and was hotly anticipating its retail release. So about nine weeks, and thirty bad reviews later, I was left wondering how something that seemed so promising in the recent past could now be such a sub-par product.
