A.P.B.

"Car 54, Where Are You?"

For a few short days, Officer Bob experienced his own version of paradise. The trial for the vacancy on the police force had been surprisingly easy; all he had to do was drive around a parking lot and pretend to arrest some orange cones. And then he was on the job, cruising around town and issuing citations between grabbing donuts on the run. But if Bob had possessed more of an officer's instinct, he may have wondered why such a whistlestop needed multiple massive police stations, each flanked by a fleet of black and white units, or even found it a bit odd that he was only the cop ever out on patrol.

He would have noticed that Small Town USA was on the road to Hell.

In his defense, the precipitous decline began innocently enough. On day two, Bob simply had to ticket litterbugs in their junky pink Cadillacs. Then it was impatient, noisy cabdrivers and free-loving hippies toking it up on top of their flower-powered, free-love VW's, all animated with a nice amount of detail. Each successful shift ended with the Chief's meaty paw rewarding Officer Bob with a congratulatory pat on the back.

Soon, though, that same hand would be wrapped around his pencil-thin neck. Drunken rednecks would begin to swarm the street, much less compliant to a flashing siren than previous offenders. Then bikers begin show up on their Harleys, running from their latest assault and battery charge. By the end of week two, murderers will have surrounded the rookie cop, unwilling to be taken without a long chase and the possible discharging of weapons. If Bob is able to survive this long, then his wits and your patience will likely be coming to an end, as even an infinite amount of virtual quarters can't see you through this wacky, but never-ending, crime fighting journey.

The joy of APB comes from apprehending its crazy miscreants while driving through an equally insane town. The overhead view of the ever increasing sprawl manages to confuse, due mostly to a lack of any map, even though the surroundings are distinctive – from Tex's Roadhouse to brassy street signs to the billboards shamelessly pushing other Atari games. The two main roads run mostly parallel to each other, infinitely wrapping back to the station like a strange mobius strip. When their paths do cross, stoplights are not involved; dodging cross traffic is just part of the job. And this is done in a car that feels so relatively fast – slower bystanders are loathe to pull over – and controls so precisely – any fine movement with the wheel can dissolve the slim margin for error along the narrow roadways, and contact with any stationary object will ignite Bob's car into a flaming pile.

But you can wreck as much as you want, as long as Bob has demerits to spare. There are no lives here, just a record of every mistake you make, and the career of a cop is full of regulations. Tap another car without your siren running. That's a demerit. Commit vehicular manslaughter by running over a pedestrian. That's a demerit. Short your quota of tickets for the day. That's a demerit – for each item missing. Inevitably, you'll hit the magic number of eleven when Bob is canned, quite literally; his former coworkers happily slam the latest failure from the force into a refuse bin.

About the only way to extend Bob's tenure is to catch a wanted criminal from the APB list. These fugitives are the ultimate caricatures in this cartoonish world. Freddy Freak is a red-eyed doper driving around in his own version of the Mystery Machine. Cool Hand Duke works his pimping game out of his deluxe sedan in Drinkerstown. Philip Fuse is a pseudo-Nazi terrorist that tosses dynamite out of his rocket car. Each zip quickly through town, bulldozing everything in his path until you ram his resistance down to nothing. Once the suspect is chased down and apprehended, though, it's time to elicit a confession by choking the life of him. But at least you won't have to meet your quota for that day. Let's hear it for police brutality as a fun and rewarding minigame.

A.P.B. is just that crazy, too much for its own good. It's screwy how fun it is to jet around town and read the jokes on the guideposts. It's insane waiting to see what the brand of harebrained criminal will pop up next. It's absurd that the game expects you to disregard these distractions long enough to mundanely arrest people and meet impossible quotas in such a short time. The difficulty almost ruins the experience, making sure your time as Officer Bob is short. But not quite, because A.P.B. is a helluva ride.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06