APB Reloaded PS4 Demo
Without knowing anything about it, I downloaded the APB Reloaded PS4 demo, thinking it was a reboot of an old arcade title.
Years ago, a friend of mine gave me a copy of APB (All Points Bulletin) for the Amiga 500 which was a port from a popular (ish) arcade game from the late 80s.
It was a top-down driving game similar to Spy Hunter; only you play a cop chasing down people littering and speeding.
APB Reloaded, from Little Orbit, is nothing like that.
APB Reloaded PS4 Demo – GTA Online Alternative?
The first impressions that come to mind are GTA Online as it’s a free-for-all where you can barely complete a task without some 9-year old taking you down.
It begins with a very decent character customisation, which is already a win for me as I spent a good 20 minutes or so creating a character that ended up looking like a fat Ben Affleck.
You can choose between the good or bad guys; cops versus criminals and carry out objectives based on the side you opt for.
For example, the crims do raids and have to get away with bags of money or tagging various areas in the city, while the cops have to thwart that by stopping you from reaching your checkpoints.
But you don’t have to worry about them: worry about the 9-year olds.
The number of times my crew members killed me was unbelievable, so much so that I bailed and just after going back in to take a couple of screenshots, deleted it from my PlayStation 4.
Gameplay and presentation in APB Reloaded is pretty good to be fair, but having friendly fire on an online game is fatal as there’s bound to be dicks who think it’s funny to keep killing you with practically zero penalties.
Sure, there’s a passive mode where nobody can touch you, but the minute you’re on a mission, that’s thrown out of the window, and you have some idiot shooting you.
Take an example of tagging an area.
There were three of us in the team and four tags to clear, so I looked at the minimap and saw that my team were heading right.
As a time-based mission, I took a left to speed things up and managed to complete one of the tasks and was closer to the second, so dashed there.
Halfway through tagging (where you can’t fight back), my teammate gunned me down and finished the job.
Thinking this was a mistake, I went onto the next round, and he did it again, and again.
Friendly Fire Ain’t So Friendly
A game later resulted in another teammate hunting me down every time I respawned so they could kill me.
As the team leader, I booted him out of the group a total of three times, but he kept joining, and the whole mission was me trying to do the job while holding back the cops as well as my alleged teammate.
Suffice to say, we failed the mission as they kept dicking about.
You know it’s kids as they always have their mics on and should you shoot them back, they call for their parents.
Grrrrr… now you see why a crustie as myself likes to play local multiplayer games as you can choose your friends…
As for the rest of the game, you can align yourself with various crew members and rank up with them; the more you increase your ranking, the more gear you unlock.
There’s a hell of a lot on offer when it comes to apparel and also the weapons, so heaps of replay value and it takes a good time to earn items.
If you’re lucky to get on a server that doesn’t have a bunch of bell ends on, the game is alright.
The driving isn’t that great, nor are the cars, but the APB Reloaded PS4 demo is quite the surprise as I had no idea about it.
As it’s an online multiplayer game, it defeats the object to turn the ‘mode’ off.
Stabbed – No, Shot In The Back
I don’t mind being hit by the enemies at all, but not friendly fire – it’s as irritating as Double Dragon and the only reasoning for it is cruel developers wanting to cause mischief and raise the stats on rage quits.
As for the APB Reloaded PS4 demo, if you want an alternative to GTA Online, it might be worth a look – at least try the demo for yourself, but for me, the friendly fire kills it.
It’s not a game to be played around kids either, so as a parent, I don’t get why others let their kids play this type of game – especially with all the f-bombs (I subsequently found a profanity filter, however).
The usual controls apply for a third-person action-adventure; L2 to aim and brake, when in a car, R2 to shoot and accelerate, when in the car.
You can also command your team and call for backup, bring up chat and locate the scoreboard to see who’s best at killing their teammates.
Yes, I am bitter.
A lot is going on in the game, and while there are tutorials to often back up what you’re supposed to do, it would be good if the menus were more intuitive.
For example, you’re encouraged to visit different districts and to do that you have to bring up your main menu (the radial dial) and select a district from the dropdowns.
It would have been better to do this on the actual map as I spent a good amount of time trying to work out how to exit an area rather than jump around balconies looking for an exit point.
Going back to the game to give it another try, I took part in a mission where you break into a building.
My teammate approached from behind then killed me at point-blank, and that, my friends, is when I deleted the game.
I present to you the online gaming community where there are no rules.
