APB Getting Started

Starting Out

Choosing Sides

Within the world of APB, the law is black and white: you're either "evil" or "good." If you're on the wrong side of the law, the Enforcers can kill you, no questions asked; likewise, if you're a Criminal, you can freely cap anyone trying to hinder your companions' success. Truthfully, neither side is a beacon of justice (though neither can fire upon inactive individuals with grayed-out names), and both take matters into their own hands.

There are certain benefits to each faction, such as earlier or exclusive access to certain weapons. Nonetheless, their differences are mostly cosmetic. Both sides have missions that include breaking and entering, and they all love to work with bombs (whether it's to set them up or defuse them); in short, you can experience practically everything no matter who you run with. Considering, go ahead and pick whichever side you like more: the cops (Enforcers) or robbers (Criminals). If you change your mind later, you can easily use one of your account's numerous character slots to create a new avatar, and align them with the other side.

Once you've finished customizing your newly-created character, you'll be plunked down in a beginner's tutorial area. Before long, you'll be prompted to start a mission, but there's something else you'll want to do first. Press the ESC key to bring up your Main Menu. Here, by clicking on Options, you'll be able to adjust a variety of settings which were grayed out earlier.

Exploring Your Options

Game Settings: Adjusting Your Mouse

Within this menu, you'll be able to adjust your HUD and mouse settings, among other things. When it comes to the latter, adjusting your Mouse Sensitivity is highly recommended. This is a free-roaming FPS at heart, and if you want to survive, being able to spin and shoot in a flick of a wrist is a must. If you're not used to high-speed mouse control, increase the sensitivity nonetheless, and dedicate yourself to practicing with it (over the course of several gaming sessions). Ideally, your reflexes will improve, and you won't want to revert to slower settings.

To be thorough, let's pretend you've tried that already, but have yet to accept higher sensitivity ratings. You're suffering to control your character, and are dying far too often. Despite this, don't slam the Defaults button just yet. Instead, decrease the sensitivity setting gradually, and give each incremental deduction a fair amount of playtime. Start hunting for a "sweet spot" that's still faster than the default, but comfortable enough for you to manage. Once you've got it, your kill rate and general gameplay performance should improve.

Video Settings: GUIs and Windows

If you're following this guide in your web browser, you may have minimized or shutdown APB to do so, but that isn't necessary. If you check out the Video Settings, you can turn off Fullscreen mode by emptying the respective checkbox and hitting Apply. This will force APB into a windowed mode, and you'll be able to ALT+TAB to this guide's window at any time. While, technically, you can ALT TAB out of a Fullscreen APB, doing so may cause problems (including restarts and crashes), so it isn't recommended.

Control Settings: Taking... Well, You Know

Beyond the Character Creation screen, here's where you can spend a lot of time assigning and re-assigning key bindings. If there's a control scheme you've used in First-Person Shooters, including specific Grenade and Reload bindings, you can (and should) duplicate it here. Customizing the Control Settings is just as important as toying around with your Mouse Sensitivity, as you'll be a sitting duck whenever you can't recall how to do certain things; when that happens, revisit this menu to find the right button, and/or change it to something you'll remember on the next go-'round.