All Points Bulletin officially releases on Tuesday, June 29. If you’re planning on buying this MMO first-person shooter, there’s nothing wrong with getting a few tips that hopefully will make your game experience a little more enjoyable and maybe give you a leg up on the competition. If you pre-ordered you might already be playing, but these hints will still come in handy

RealTime Worlds has not only raised the bar for character creation in games, they’ve put it into the stratosphere. You could literally spend days tweaking your character, getting him or her the way you like. Spend some time with it. Once you start tweaking your character it becomes a lot of fun just discovering all the customization options. 

If you’ve ever used a design application like Photoshop you’ll feel right at home. If you haven’t it might seem a little daunting at first. Don’t be put off by this. Try the randomizer until you get a character that looks something like what you have in mind, then use the advance tools to change the features you want.

Unlike most MMOs, you can go back and make cosmetic changes to your characters as often as you like and it will only cost you in game money (Other MMOs go so far as to charge real life cash for this “privilege”.). But try to get your character as close to where you like it as possible. This will save you money that’s better spent on weapons —œ they’re expensive. 

Even if you know the game, do the tutorial. Why? Because if you skip the tutorial you’ll end up on the streets with no coin in your pockets. You’ll have to go earn it on the unforgiving streets of San Paro. That can get you killed.

If you do the tutorial, you’ll end up with enough cash at the end of it to buy at least one new gun. About the only thing the starter guns are good for is getting you killed. Do the tutorial, get a new gun, and get yourself a few extra kills. 

The tutorial suggests pledging yourself to a non-player character (NPC) contact. If you skip the tutorial, shame on you. You’re missing that money mentioned above, but you also missed this one solid piece of advice.

Pledging yourself to a contact, you’ll run missions almost exclusively for that contact’s, reaping rewards faster than if you were taking missions from whomever sends them your way. 

While you’re doing the tutorial see how well your mouse is reacting. The default mouse sensitivity seems greater in APB than other games; it might just have been the nature of the gameplay, though. Dialing back the sensitivity a little helped a great deal. Mouse sensitivity and accuracy is more important in APB. Being able to snap your mouse to your opponent without going by them and adjusting back will give you an advantage in fights. 

Adjustments to mouse sensitivity can be made through Options, Game Option.

The city of San Paro, the location for APB action, is literally a city of many levels. You can climb across freeways, get up on rooftops, and position yourself on terraces and balconies. Take advantage of this. Most of the time, almost all of the time, you’ll be fighting other players, so get up above them. You’ll be able to see them coming, where they are, and it will be easier for you to shoot them.

 

That’s it for now. Look back in a couple of days, shortly after release, for a full review of APB. In the meantime, enjoy your time in San Paro. Try not to get shot.