Reloaded's cops-and-robbers MMO APB: Reloaded escaped capital punishment once already when the studio picked up the shelved title in 2011 after dwindling player numbers and the demise of original developer Realtime Worlds almost sent it to Death Row. Now, we're getting another APB, but it's a gun of an entirely different caliber: an "agility"-based multiplayer shooter. Reloaded explains it all on its Kickstarter campaign for APB Vendetta, where it asks for $300,000 in 30 days.
Here's Reloaded's pitch: "APB Vendetta is a character-driven extreme mobility competitive shooter, inspired by the APB: Reloaded universe and built on an entirely new high-agility game system featuring extreme movement mechanics, melee combat, dual wield weapons, character-specific finishing moves, a fighting-game ethos, customizable private servers, modding tools, and the latest version of Unreal Engine 3."
Whew. Got all that? In other words, Vendetta is an APB-ified riff on the fluid parkour of Mirror's Edge and the gunplay theatrics from the popular mods Action Half-Life and The Specialists—both of which drew inspiration from John Woo films and The Matrix.
So, in addition to loudly clothed criminals thumbing their noses at the law as before, we'll now get loudly clothed criminals thumbing their noses while cartwheeling upside-down off a drain pipe. Vendetta will have 12 characters and three archetypes to choose from, split down a variation of the standard Light, Medium, and Heavy setup with a few special exceptions—the lumbering Juggernaut, for example, actually sprints the fastest because of a special charge move.
In a somewhat ironic twist, Vendetta won't be free-to-play. It's "buy-to-play," giving players "all guns, characters, and game-affecting items upfront" after a one-time cost, with the option to purchase "monthly server rentals for on-demand managed and modded servers." "Progression and damage systems have to be tightly controlled in free-to-play games," Reloaded claims. "With Vendetta, we're instead taking a portion of the APB world and turning it in to a premium experience where the community can participate in reworking the game design on their own servers."
Have a look at APB Vendetta on its Kickstarter page . Do you think a movement-heavy shooter is a worthy spinoff from the existing MMO?
