I love when Matt talks about a bad game, he ends up mentioning another bad game and then laments about how he must talk about it in the future. This series just writes itself!

2:20 So you're telling me that David Jones left DMA Design/Rockstar Games just before they released GTA III, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas. That has to be one of the most poorly timed and thought out career decisions in the video game industry's entire history.

Imagine being at the APB panel and getting a t shirt for a game that barely made a dime

The calender showed July2020 when Matt talked about 2010. Which made it seem initially as if the publishers managed to delay the review embargo for 10 years,now that would be something.

This looks like the game Ryan Reynolds was trapped in in free guy

APB was a mess, but it’s a mess i weirdly got a lot of fun out of still. You knew you were playing jank, but it was really, REALLY flavorful jank, if that makes sense. You had to constantly curb your excitement or hopes of ‘man, they could really make this absolutely amazing’ because the framework had so much potential.

i've said for the longest times to buddies that man I wish more games had the customization of APB without just without the gameplay of APB. just a character model maker with all the customization in the game you can make limitless characters

YES! I needed a What Happun? on this game. I just graduated university in Scotland to become an environment artist, and I remember in my 2nd Year, we had to take Intro to Games Design so we could understand the game designers role further and that. I think the first or second week of classes, and the lecturer specifically pulls up an entire powerpoint about this game and explaining the issues and problems it faced, teaching us to not do what David Jones did and highlighting the complications that can arise when working on a game project. Another beautiful video yet again, Matt!!

Oh shit, that Body Harvest game was alright. Needa grab a copy for the ole 64.

when you started describing the percentages my brain immediately went "and cue the steiner math clip... now". turned over to the video and i was NOT disappointed

Holy shit this game... I spent so much time on APB Reloaded that it's still the 12th most played game on my Steam account. I have such good memories despite all the jank.

I was so excited for this game when it was announced, and I will admit, it was the customization that really drew me in. I never had the money to buy it back then but I stayed enamored with the concept. So when reloaded was announced I thought I finally had a shot, It was a day one download when I got my PS4. Shit sucked, everything cool in customization is locked behind a paywall, and it's not new player friendly at all. I'm level one doing missions against those 200 people who have been playing this game religiously for 4 years now. Bummed me out.

If I can suggest a recommendation for a future video, I feel like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 would be a good candidate for the series. That game has one of the fucking roughest development cycles I've ever seen for a major title with setback after setback piling on, and the fact that it still a good game and would go on to being Monolith Soft's best selling title is nothing short of a miracle.

4:46 omg that is too perfect! Kinda wanna see all the other japanese devs like kamiya and Kojima as Yakuza bosses now lmao 😂

The Shigeru Miyamoto/Yakuza bit was hilarious 😂😂

Man, I remember reading about this game in Game Informer so much and then it just never happened. It has so much potential.

I remember this game and the situation with Realtime Worlds. I would've been interested if it wasn't just a multiplayer game.

I did heard that APB was on life support sometime but damn, 10 years? 11 maybe? How many games can survive that long? If you told me an online game has been going on for more than 10 years I'd think it would be one of the greatest games ever.

I remember playing this game when it came out. The game itself was nonsense, but the graphics and character creator were AMAZING.

The character customization was the only thing that kept me going back to this game, still one of the best I've ever seen in a game.

I'm surprised Saint's Row wasn't mentioned. It being basically a customisable GTA must have stolen a bit of APB's potential gamer base.

APB utterly spoiled me for character customization; nothing's ever been able to compare since. If the _rest_ of the game had seen that level of polish and development, maybe they could've made that Blizzard-level money after all.

This episode drops the weekend Free Guy hits theaters. Good timing, Matt!

I remember a friend of mine being interviewed for a job with Realtime Worlds a few months before APB released; at the time he was disappointed he didn't get the job, but in retrospect he dodged a bullet there.

NerdSlayer made a Death of a Game-report on APB a few years back. Now I'm curious to see if you've managed to dig up even more information about this disaster MMO.

Oh man APB, so close to being really great and yet so far. I think Matt hit all the big issues. I got to work on the design team late in the project and I recall trying to suggest some improvements to the weapons to get them feeling different, while also fixing the OP ones and making the useless ones have some purpose. I mostly got the vibe that middle management didn't want anyone 'below' them telling them what they should do, upper management was shielded from hearing any bad feedback, and that what we had was usually deemed as good enough. A really talented team that just seemed to have a lot of barriers in the way of improving the game and sort of just had to keep moving forward. That's sort of the "checkbox" style management that Matt mentioned. Most issues were ignored as we'll fix that bug eventually and the fun will come together once there is a ton of players.

I have a derogatory term for what the insider dev described: "Box Checking". Of course, setting up action item lists and working through the items is key to a successful project. When it's just checking boxes to look busy and to drive project management metrics, it crosses a line into something absurd to work under and entirely unproductive.

I remember seeing trailers for this game and thinking it was the coolest shit.

Man, this takes me back. What I enjoyed most about APB is the Suicide Girls party they did at E3 XD

It seems that developing MMOs in order to make the same money than WOW and utterly failing was 'the style at the time'. Also, was that Tails theme from Sonic Adventure at the end? Haven't listened to that in forever!

➤ 9 DAYS LEFT! - Matt McPlushy Campaign - www.makeship.com/products/matt-mcmuscles-plush

God, I loved APB, lol. Me and my friends were obsessed with it for most of 2011. By the time we started the game was in a relatively stable place. It was a shallow experience in terms of moment to moment gameplay, but there was something special about it, without a doubt. The gunplay was floaty, the movement was stiff, the loop was repetitive, but customizing our cars and rolling in as a team of cops giving chase to a team of criminals was an incredible hook. Honestly, the game didn't start shitting the bed for me personally until they started to slowly turn it into a lobby shooter instead of an open world shooter. Once they started making the standard TDM maps the main draw of the game, it lost what little it had going for it, and was left to focus on the mechanics. Without the glitz of the open world and the cops vs robbers vibe, it was just a bad MP shooter.

APB: Reloaded was one of the first games I got on my first gaming PC back in 2012 and I loved it. Awesome art style, music and atmosphere. Plenty of players back then too. It's been sad to see it slowly die out over the following years.

I remember being really hyped about this game back in the day, and then 1 day it felt like it just disappeared

Oh damn this train wreck... use to play this a ton back in the day and it was a complete mess. I saw the post alert and was hit with so many memories, just had to watch it immediately haha. Thanks for another great vid Matt!

To be honest, this game COULD be nice if they had a better vision of what exactly they would sell - as it is, they sell weapons in a gameplay-heavy product. So the novelty of customization wears off when one of your first opponents has Rocket Launchers.

Jesus, I remember reading the initial stories when this game was all the hype. I completely forget it ever released.

I was at university near Dundee when all this went down. I remember seeing Realtime Worlds at a job fair and the employees seemed pretty glum. I also remember when RTW fell apart they were auctioning off their IT equipment.

I was today years old when I noticed the box art to GTA2 is just a zoom in on the art to GTA1

I remember not only playing this game but all of the hype surrounding it and my stepbrother at the time getting into it. Blast from the past. I Love this damn channel so much.

Matrix Online would be a good WH topic I think. Only a few peeps may even know it exists.

Brilliant. Been waiting for this game to pop on the feed.

Oh that k.o.f music gets me everytime lmao

I played this game with my friend for days straight. I kept ramming my shitty van into stores, stealing cats and then driving away whilst we laughed uncontrollably. We were like 13-14, it was great.

I played Reloaded a long time ago. It was quirky, but fun. I'm not surprised it still has over 200 players playing.

You got to do the Tak trilogy! Tak and the Power of Juju, Tak 2 the Staff of Dreams and Tak the Great Juju Challenge! There amazing games that deserve attention I’m doing everything I can to get the attention of the developers to get the games remade! There amazing!

I only know of this game because, when I was a little kid, I got the Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer Edition from 2011. I remember APB having a striking and blurry picture that took up most of the page. The record it got was for the quickest death of an MMO.

OMG I remember asking for this analysis a while ago, thank you for caring!

I had tons of fun PvP moments in this game. Fantastic good time. Extremely broken and unbalanced though.

Thumbs up for Steiner Math.

Similar situation to what happened with Flagship Studio's Hellgate London.

How could you forget to mention that poor sap who got all those piercings and tattoos in that whole "Human Avatar" marketing stunt???

Adding Steiner Math makes this video an instant classic. Bravo!

I remember playing APV and really liking it, the customization capabilities were a lot of fun. The problem though, it was so insanely pay-to-win there was no point in even trying.

Holy crap! Matt just scratched an itch that's been in my brain for Years by saying the name Body Harvest. I use to play that game a LOT as a kid, but I could never remember the name of it for pretty much the rest of my life. Talk about catharsis.

Always a delight when I see there's a new one of these.

APB along with its rerelease APB: Reloaded showed potential of something that is hard to find now day's. Cop vs Crooks gameplay with limitless customization in almost all aspect, from clothes to cars, user made avatars/sprays and music. A few gameplay aspect adhered to cops v crooks gameplay by rewarding criminals when they rampage, steal from shops (by breaking window and taking what drops from it) and such while cops ware penalized for harming civis and rewarded for recovery of stolen vehicles/loots. Not on mission but in freerom. Its sad to know game with potencial was in the end, left to root and kept on life support (with rumored engine update never coming out, yet time will tell) and the only people who are keeping it now are on radio silence. I feel this game will be still going for a few more years till either gets sold another time (and killing another studio/devs in the process) to someone who promise change while doing nothing or it will be killed off. Im just unsure what ever to exect masses coming to its grave or just one janitor whos there to clean up the mess.

I loved APB, still have my retail copy here. It was fun to play some GTA-style game with friends. APB Reloaded was a dumpster fire (I guess it still is?)!

I pre-ordered APB on steam in 2010 after following it for so long. I had so much fun playing that game, especially playing enforcers with ltl and arresting everyone. The customization was really next level, and the gameplay wasn't bad as far as shooters went for the time. I still go back to it every once in a while but it's such a disappointment to see what it has become and to watch it fall apart from the beginning.

I still to this day have fond memories of playing APB~ I probably would still be playing it now if there was any new content

I used to play APB reloaded. It was pretty alright and i liked the cops/criminal system since being a cop let you flex on the crims with LTL weapons that were worse than normal weapons, but tripled their respawn timer if they got downed by them. Plus the trolling you could do with dump trucks. But yeah, besides that it was pretty lacking.

One day... one day, Matt is gonna have an episode that doesn't foreshadow another episode.

Lately I've been struggling with my work and life but this videos make me look forward for the weekend. These videos are so f***ing good

That Scott Steiner promo reference was fantastic 🤣 THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE AND THEY SPELL DISASTER FOR YOU AT SACKERFICE!

"At GDC in 2008, David Jones showed off what really seemed to be the main draw of the entire project, at the expense of almost everything else: the customization." Dude, from the Black Ops series to Cyberpunk '77, why is that so often the kiss of death for projects like this?

Holy shit now that's a game that completely fled my mind, I forgot it even existed

APB Reloaded, while maybe not reviewing well, was still pretty fun back in the day.

I went through a phase when I was 12 where I was obsessed with free to play games and Apb:reloaded was one of my favorites... At the time my small brain was just amazed that a gta style game could ever be free

I really wish this game got the love it deserved. 💔

This was basically GTAO before GTAO was a thing. Honestly this looks better then what GTAO has become in 2021.

took me almost 3 minutes to realize its not apb reloaded we are talking about here

They had enough to start a whole new company and they still never paid severance packages? Goddamn

Games has the coolest loading screen i have ever seen tho although not much can be said about the rest

I had a friend who got me into this game years and years ago. It was fun but it was so laggy, but at least I could blast my Power Rangers music out of my car for all to enjoy.

Oh boy i been waiting for this one

This was one of those games I had a genuine hype for and I have tried on multiple occasions to get into. I think a big problem with the game is a lack of direction especially in the early game on what you should be doing or even what you can do. Alot of what I learned was by watching other players such as holdups, arrests, graffiti and not just customization and missions.

Wish they could’ve done the crackdown sequels right

Damn, this guy really went from making three of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, to killing entire studios. Even John Romero got humbled after his first major failure, dude.

Loved seeing that Scott Steiner Maths promo.

Ending the video with Believe in Myself, of all songs, added an excellent extra layer of surreality to this whole debacle wow.

On the one hand I'm happy to see someone talk more about APB. On the other I'm incredibly sad to be running through all the problems this game has had over the years. There's honestly a lot more to the downfall of the game. It had a good second wind following Gamersfirst acquiring it. However, they sort of made some really bizarre decisions over their years managing the title.. causing it to fall hard. Focusing almost exclusively on the cash shop while the game hemorrhaged players being one of the biggest. Which I can't say I helped. I'm one of the idiots that suggested the "True Ogre" and came up with some of the garbage presets still seen in the shop today! Woo! ...I hate myself for that lol Little Orbit has arguably put the most effort into trying to fix up the game. Though some choices that turned out to be less than optimal have led them down the same path as the previous attempts despite this. Anyway if someone is bored enough: I'd be down to talk about some Gamersfirst era APB stuff. Was a volunteer for a couple of years. Which kind of volunteer? All of them. Every role. Did quite a bit and even ended up working closely with the team at that point in time.

ABP Reloaded. Now that's a name I've not heard in... years. I bought this game with a friend as a teenager and we had a blast especially with the customizable stuff, but eventually the gameplay just became so pay2win and then the servers shut down shortly after. It had a lot of potential and they tanked it into the ground so hard.

Hey Matt, love your videos. Can't help but realize that after watching the whole what happun series that we haven't seen StarCraft Ghost on here. It's over 100 videos so I could be wrong. Anyways keep up the great work, looking forward to your next video!

Very cool I did not know this was ever a thing, this channel is always great for video game history lessons.

I spent more time customizing my character than I did actually playing the game. Loved the customization, the rest of the game? Not so much.

Oooo this will be an interesting one and i would love to see an episode on Final Fantasy XIV so we can see how they managed to save the game 😊

For years I'd get ads for APB:Reloaded on gaming websites, and it really takes me back since those were sidebar and banner ads.

Did not think I'd be hearing Little Orbit's name on a What Happened video prior to the Unsung Story episode.

I will always love this game for introducing me to Steam. It’s a technical shitshow with heavy P2W elements but it’s the reason I joined Gabe’s wild ride.

I would love episode on Serious Sam 4. That game feels like it went through development hell for sure.

You madman, you Scott Steiner'd your way through that math

Man, haven't thought about this game in _ages_ . Really damn clever use of that end credits song, by the way.

Could you do a crossover with Todd In The Shadows, to talk about Power Gig: Rise Of The Six String?

APB was an absolute flop and yet it's such a big part of my childhood (more like teenage years but yea LOL) and, to this day- even though NA servers are dead, nothing scratches the same itch that apb does with its combat and customization

Love these videos so muuuuch!!

Always love shoutouts/references/rehashes of Steiner Math. Such a masterpiece in wrestling promos.

Doom was redeemed. Resident Evil was redeemed. This game was equally massive in its time and deserves its redemption, but in the meantime, can you show us What Happened to "Alone in the Dark"?

Body Harvest was pretty fucking legit for its age. Needs a sequel TBH

I would love to see you either cover Guitar Hero Live or Rock Band 4. I think Rock Band 4 would be more interesting since you could also talk about Mad Catz shutting down in that episode too.

I was still actively reading Game Informer all during this game’s dev time, and I don’t remember it at all. I mean I thought this video was going to be about the action racing arcade game APB from the 80s.