| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A conversion of the hit 1987 arcade coin-op, APB is a fast and fun precursor of the Grand Theft Auto series - the major difference being that you are on the side of the law.
Description
APB - All Points Bulletin. Put your foot on the gas and let rip as you roar through the streets of the city in a series of hilarious and wild car chases.
You play the role of Officer Bob, a tough Cop in this challenging cartoon-style game, whose job is to patrol the streets of the city and apprehend various criminals in your trusty Police Car.
Each day you are given a quota of offenders who must be apprehended before the day is out in order to get a salary bonus and keep your job. These include litter louts, drunks and hitch-hikers. At times you'll receive an All Points Bulletin on a particularly dangerous villain who must be tracked down and arrested.
Should you catch Sid Sniper, Freddy Freak or any of the other master criminals, you must return them to the station for 'questioning'. If they confess, you can forget about your quota for the rest of the day. However, wringing a confession out of them is not that easy, and you must be through before the Chief comes in. Waggle the joystick left and right as quickly as you can - a grid shows how fast you're going and how close the criminal is to confessing.
To arrest an offender, you must position the Steering Wheel Cursor over their car and switch on the siren. Continue to hold down the fire button for as long as you need the siren. Some criminals may ignore you the first few times you signal them to stop, depending on the severity of their crime. As the game progresses you can obtain a gun and shoot their cars; but don't hit any innocent bystanders. APB offenders must be rammed off the road and will not give themselves up without a fight.
If you collide with a vehicle while the siren is off, crash too hard or injure an innocent party, you'll get a Demerit point. You'll also get a Demerit for every offender you do not catch on your quota. Collect too many Demerits and you'll be fired.
Ratings
The multi-load aspect of the tape version of APB brought the game in for a bit of an Amstrad Action pasting! Reviewer Trenton Webb felt that "On tape this non-sequential game is ponderous and irksome. To make matters worse even the "pretties" - the beatings up - require a rewind and search before you can play on... on disk, APB is both playable and amusing. On tape the novelty soon wears off."
| AA: | Issue 50 (Nov '89) | Page 43 | 60% |
Solution
None
Cheats
None
Screenshots
Title Screen
In-game 1
Videos
None
Links
- APB at The Amstrad CPC Games Resource
- APB at the English-language Wikipedia
- World of Spectrum: Link to World of Spectrum