APB Reloaded launched on Xbox One last week. I played it for around half an hour after creating my character before swiftly uninstalling the game from my Xbox, hoping never to hear or write about that dastardly game ever again. Alas, here I am because Digital Foundry have decided to risk their sanity and examine the series’ console debut . . . and, of course, it is awful.
Dubbed “The Worst Game on Xbox One”, the channel compares the performance of APB Reloaded to that of the shockingly bad Lichdom: Battlemage. If just the mention of Lichdom: Battlemage made you shudder, which it should, and then this part might make you cry as APB Reloaded is even worse than Maximum Games’ monstrosity in every single way.
Starting with visuals, APB Reloaded looks like a slightly higher resolution game from the early PS2 days due to its flat textures, dated character models and even more dated animation quality. What makes this even worse, however, is that the most of the time textures on objects, characters and even buildings will fail to load. Just underneath you will find an image of a car that I followed for around five minutes or so before taking a screenshot on my Xbox One console. Yeah, it is that bad.
But performance is the real killer. Just like Lichdom: Battlemage. APB barely manages to keep itself over the mid-teens and is prone to constant screen-tearing. The game will also freeze completely at times for a few seconds when moving around the world, not something you really want happening in an open-world MMO where you can be shot and killed at any time.
Along with this, APB is full of general glitches. Whilst not mentioned in the Digital Foundry analysis, APB Reloaded is very consistent in delivering an experience where NPC’s can change at any time, vehicles can just disappear and, as detailed in this Eurogamer video, people can shoot their guns whilst holding them upside down.
Whilst we will not be reviewing APB Reloaded—as playing this game for more than ten minutes would make you more insane than a Lovecraftian protagonist—I can say on behalf of everyone that APB’s gameplay is atrocious. Not only is the game ugly, poorly explained and overall quite empty but the game is one of the most boring MMO’s I’ve ever played. Firefly Online is more exciting than this and that game is literally just a menu right now.
If you’re still wondering if APB is really that bad, check out Digital Foundry’s analysis below. If you still don’t believe us, go play APB on Xbox One right now, it’s free! I will warn you, however, that we are not responsible for any harm that APB Reloaded may cause. Proceed with caution.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.