By: Mike-san
If you’re thinking about buying property in San Paro, you should already know that you’ll need insurance up the ass. Clearly, the fact of the matter is that Enforcers and Criminals will raise your property damages through the roof with their Obeya and N-TEC crossfire exchanges, and if the graffiti-styled antics of the criminals, or the door-busting warrants of the enforcers hasn’t already caught your attention then you may be intrigued by the lack of parking on the city streets. Of course, life in San Paro can’t be all that menacing, can it? After all, the Enforcers are protectorates of all that is just, and considering that they pretty much own the city, the criminals wouldn’t be damn well smart enough to start working along the G-Kings and the Bloodroses in an all-out war for the city, right? Despite the overpopulation, the city is always under constant threat. In fact, both sides are the threat. In case you ever did wonder why the parking meters are empty and the parking garages are overflowing with pedestrians, the many battles of the city streets should be the greatest indication of that. Indeed, if Real Time Worlds does get anything right, it’s the ability to immerse the players in the War for San Paro. The War for San Paro was declared long ago when the game first appeared during E3, and has since hit the streets quicker than the piles of corpses lined up across the sidewalks and balconies of the inner city’s Waterfront and Financial Districts.
In case you had forgotten the last two parts, let me bring you back to speed. Guns determine the one-on-one shootouts, whereas the prettier the player the prettier their gameplay. In the case of what may seem to be the most one-sided gameplay in the game, two or three Enforcers rampage through G-Kings and Bloodrose territory without so much as a second though, and not once has this stopped Criminal activity from growing expansively. True, the idea of outnumbered gunplay makes for an incredibly aggravating battle of wits, but once the real gang wars kick in, each and every player means business. And what could possibly be better than raising hell in the streets of San Paro with complete and utter strangers who may/not have the slightest idea as to how to take cover or get out of the burning car? Gameplay has been tremendously surprising in its ability to bring out the most immersive cops-and-robbers game I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Minus the few perks that stand out. (Goddamn Enforcers…)
But let’s get into more depth with the actual missions that lead into these gang wars. In a nutshell, your basic missions could consist of tagging different walls, breaking into stores/houses through investigations or simple steals, arming/disarming bombs, stealing cars/impounding cars, as well as the personal missions from your pledged contacts. (This could be as ridiculous as breaking into an ex’s house and stealing back their items, for example.) In addition, you get the occasional ‘dispatch’ missions, which are district missions that adapt to the missions of enemy players as well as allied players. The occasional missions created from your contacts are the usual result of your own endeavors, and anyone with a high enough reputation on their character at the time (out of five stars, much like the GTA series) will have dispatches sent out against them, which can create an entirely new situation all together. This can be a double-bladed sword in the sense that the dispatch can be answered by one of the weakest players in the entire game (e.g., my computer) or a horde of the other team’s players. On the plus side, if you have some sort of resistance on your side, these missions manage to become absolutely chaotic – and absolutely brilliant with the help of PVP. Honestly speaking, an all PVE version of APB might actually be quite dull, if unplayable in the sense that it would stand out as a copy of the Saints Row and GTA series. The single most important thing that makes combat great is the PVP, and considering that every mission is a viable target for PVP missions can turn from underground crimes to massive car chases. The idea of an all PVP game actually seems a lot more fun, and considering the fact that the level cap is simply entering the game with your character, getting involved doesn’t seem so much like a chore with its other predecessors in the RPG community. Again however, depending on your side of the conflict the turf wars, this experience could be the most rewarding experience you’ve ever felt in a multi-player game or the absolute worst video game idea in history. The adaptation of the missions also strikes your fancy during the dispatches. Sometimes it’s up to you alone, or you and your teammates to single-handedly stop the mission objectives or your entire group could get bumped into one objective with multiple people, resulting in that massive turf battle anyone who craves the game is looking for. There’s a satisfying quality to it that has to do with your ability to ride around the Financial District or the Waterfront with you and your posse’ as you beat some heads and drive-by your opponents as you turn the entire district into a battleground. The battle sequences result in some of the most beautiful and bloody that anyone playing GTA or crackdown could ever ask for, and at the end of the day your friends will still be psyched up from your last run through the city after gunning down the car that everyone on the opposition clung to dear life for during your five laps across the entire district.
What really earns your keep at the end of the day is the reputation meter, which is your basic guide to showing off your massive egos across the entire server. Now, your reputation increases as you complete more missions, and never goes down even if you lose every single mission. Your reputation is the key to unlocking more clothing, upgrades, accessories, vehicles, weapons, and pretty much everything that you could possibly buy within the game itself. Now, reputation isn’t devoted to your character alone; reputation with your contacts, the organization of the district, as well as your rating, which is a temporary way of saying how great/poorly you’re doing during a specific time period. Reputations with contacts are the easiest to level up; the more missions you do, regardless of win or loss earn you reputation points with them, and as the level cap on reputation is 6 with each contact the chances of maxing out (and earning some wonderful benefits) your contact are fairly easy, provided you have enough time in a matter of a few hours or so devoted to these missions. Organizational ‘standing’ on the other hand peaks up as you do more PVP missions, and with the more people on your side the greater the organizational reward is. Though you get small tid-bits of organizational reward from your contacts, the best and most efficient way of increasing your organizational standing is to do these PVP missions. (Plus, it’s fun.) Your ‘rating’ on the other hand, is more or less an unimportant way of describing how well you’re doing on the server. This is actually one of the only things that I really didn’t find all that intriguing about it, despite its revolutionary ability to tell you that some guy’s been playing longer than you. It goes on levels, yes…but levels that really don’t seem to have much effect on actual gameplay. The reputation system, however is in fact quite interesting, and while it compensates for the lack of levels it doesn’t alter your gameplay, meaning that despite that 10+ rating you have, you’re still on-par with a guy that has 30+ more reputation than you do. Casual gamers will feel absolutely welcomed in for this reason, as the idea of progression doesn’t feel so necessary to have fun.
Concluded on Part 4: Technical Difficulties.
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