I have over 11,000 RTW points. Which was over two years of game time :(

APB was a great game. I don't regret one minute of gametime. There was something special about this one and I'm really sad to see it go.

APB has really changed the way I look at gaming and gamers now.

I will have many fond memories.

I wrote this post for another website:

I'm a Threat 15 (highest threat-Win:Loss Ratio) Enforcer on LaRocha

I'm sad about its demise. I believe it was one of the best games to come out in a long time. I really believe a lot of people who would have liked the game didn't give it a time of day because of bad reviews.

I used to put a lot of faith in reviews. After putting in a lot of time actually playing the game, I'm convinced a lot of reviewers barely gave it enough time to understand the game, let alone play it. I have completely reevaluated my stance on taking a lot of reviewers word for it. I saw their lazy writing in this one.

The game did have problems. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect. But the things that bother me the most is that so much misinformation gets floated about the game that is just plain dead wrong.

A lot of people I don't think understand the process of putting a game like this together. I saw the genius in it.

Strengths:

        * 2 maps. How can two maps be a strength? When you realize it is more like 1000 maps put into a single contained world. So by my definition, APB had 2000 maps over two worlds. This led to a randomness in the game. You'd have to drive in between "maps" with a thousand things going on in between you and your objective. This led to a wonderful randomness that sometimes worked for you and other times worked against you.
        * Improvisational gameplay. Items could end up in areas specifically not designed for a battle. You had to on the fly make decisions on where to be to be most advantageous.
        * Shooting was less important in this game. I'd say 70 percent of the game was shooting, 30 percent was driving. Driving ability was really important. So if you aren't the best Counterstrike aimer in the world, you'd have value if you could keep your sports car on the road. Good driving was a skill in this game.
        * Knowledge was power. People complained about upgrades being too powerful. As someone who also started a new character frequently, I didn't have a problem with upgraded people. Why? Because I knew the ins and outs of the game better. So when a newbie gets decimated he blames the powerful gun his opponent used. But I know that if they changed equipment, the player with more knowledge would win despite the upgrades.

Weaknesses:

        * Matchmaking. The number one thing that killed this game was matchmaking. It put to much power in the hands of the players. Players could decide on what missions to take. Experienced players would take the missions they knew would be easy. New players would take anything and eventually get matched up with experienced players. So what ended up happening is you had a public group going against a clan. So you had the equivalent of IDRA going up against bronze players. You had Fatality going up against new Quakelive players. You put the best tactical Counterstrike clan into a public de_dust2 server. New player dies. New player dies. New player dies. New Player dies. This game is shit and quits. 90 percent of the people who played this game ran into this. Upgraded guns just fueled the fire in the new players head. This game could not be played solo. If you went solo, the game would be a lot slower. A lot more boring. And sounds a lot like a lot of the reviews I read about the game. Basically if you jumped into a TF2 server, played one on one for 5 hours then decided, oh I'll join a public server with a group and end up going against the number one TF2 team, would your opinion about the game change?
      * Cheating got completely out of hand. Those hardcore players who could surrivie their newbie lumps suddenly realized there were some godly players out there. Too godly. WAAAYYY overboard too godly. So they got fed up with the inaction and quit.
      * Balanced for you and your friends. Not balanced for every internet asshole that ever lived. It is kinda like playing a game of Monoploy over the internet where you could steal from the bank, houses, properties, etc. If you play with your friends, they aren't gonna (likely) cheat the heck out of you. But people in APB took every little advantage and exploited the shit out of it.

I could go on.

But let me tell you this. I've played thousands of games in my life; Multiplayer, single player, arcade, fucking PINBALL. APB was a great and heavily misunderstood game. I wish I could give every employee a fucking medal for having the courage to do something different. I saw the love in this game. I saw every detail that sooo many players overlooked.

I guess I'll have to go back to team stacking TF2 server and stand in my pre-determined sniper rifle spot with the perfect view down the alley. Then when I get bored of that I'll go build my turret in the same place everyone else does. Then I'll get bored of that and fire my rocket launcher around the same corner on Dustbowl.

I agree. I watched the commentary and I expected a lot more then just describing what I could see with my eyes.

Rather then describing the action, "Oh that Scimitar is taking damage." "The Scimitar is down."

How about why it is taking damage, what is being used to make it take damage, and how is it part of the teams strategy to go after that ship first? How about a description of the abilities? How about anything besides what a 6 year old could tell me by looking at the health bars?

It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Want to see casting done right? Watch HDstarcraft or Huskystarcraft Starcraft 2 videos to show how proper commentary should be done.

I find the most eye opening fact is that the sun is 93,000,000 miles behind the shuttle. It is an awesome display of the scale of the sun.