APB: Reloaded

There is fun to be had on the streets of San Paro though, and as the price of entry is precisely zero, there's absolutely no reason not to give it a try.

APB Reloaded comes with new locations, a better gameplay and a new free-to-play format that lets you play for hours without spending anything, though you have to buy something in order to be more competitive.

The immediacy of the game with fast missions and compact worlds allows constant action, which grants immediate satisfaction. However, it takes more than flowered shirts and deadly shotguns to create a committed relationship with the player.

A textbook example of wasted potential. Again! If someone woke me up in the middle of the night and asked about the differences between the original APB and Reloaded I'd mention only two things. 'Civilians' got some new animations and the game went free-to-play. It's not enough for a relaunch. [February 2012, p.54]

Fires far too many blanks. Free is a tough price to turn down, but the city of San Paro is – at best – a vacation spot. We simply can't recommend an extended stay.

Reloaded has recreated APB, but reined in its ambition. Most of the same problems are here, but for a better price. [Mar 2012, p.70]

This isn't a great game, it's not even a good game, but it is the closest thing we've got to a cops-and-robbers MMO - which is, I suspect, one of the all-time great video game concepts. One day, somebody's going to do it right, and they're going to become very rich indeed.

Although APB has a few good ideas, the execution just isn't fun enough. It presents itself as an online Grand Theft Auto, but in its core is nothing more than deathmatch in an open world. Shooting isn't balanced well, and the number of missions is so limited that it becomes a bore really fast.

It's still not nearly enough to save what is a fundamentally bad shooter. The smartest thing GamersFirst did was make APB: Reloaded free-to-play, allowing players to find out for themselves without the upfront cost.

Just a bad shooter in its bones. Whether the cops or the robbers win a matchup is still mostly dependent on who gets there first and camps out with line-of-sight to the objective. Lack of locational damage means hitting someone with a sniper shot is going to make them half dead whether the bullet hits someone in the face or the ankle. Other than the tweaks mentioned earlier the vast litany of complaints we had about the game the first time around still stands.