Realtime's Dave Jones defends APB

Realtime Worlds' Dave Jones has responded to criticism of APB in a wide-ranging interview due to be published on Eurogamer next week.

Jones blamed disappointing review scores on "misconceptions" and "huge expectations".

Eurogamer gave the game a 6/10 this morning, criticising the combat, matchmaking, and vehicle handling, but praising it for "the vast amount of intelligent thought and clever design that has gone into the structure of the game".

"It's not for absolutely everybody," Jones admitted. "If some people are diehard FPS guys and Modern Warfare is their life, they're going to struggle to make the change.

"But Splinter Cell players, or guys who are in to more tactical combat and they just love being online with their friends in a multi-player game, we're finding we're really resonating with those guys. There are a lot of misconceptions.

"Funnily enough I'm just reading the Eurogamer one just now, and there are misconceptions about more powerful characters and more powerful guns.

"There are no more powerful characters and there are no more powerful guns in the game. But people die and they see a rating on a player. Rating has nothing to do with the kind of equipment they have. Our weapon system is exactly the same as Modern Warfare. We don't have more powerful weapons. We just have a different range of weapons."

Jones said APB suffers in comparison to Grand Theft Auto, a series he helped create while at DMA Design (later Rockstar North).

"Some people had too high expectations. The game years ago was initially tagged as GTA MMO, which we'd never said. Obviously people put two and two together - our history and the fact it was online - and said, 'Oh it's going to be like a GTA MMO'. I think that's set huge expectations. That's not what we were building, so I was expecting that."

Despite the less than stellar reaction to APB thus far, Jones remains upbeat.

"I remember on GTA 1, people laughed at it because it was a 2D game when Ridge Racer appeared. They laughed at the screenshots. They said, 'These guys are crazy releasing a 2D top down game'. But once they played the game a fair bit they go, 'Well actually it's kind of good fun'. And they saw past that. Crackdown was the same. Every game - I think it's a bit of a curse of mine. We just try and make sure we do something different every time."

Expect more from our interview with Dave Jones when it goes live next week.