bean19
01-11-2006, 11:17 AM
Netdevil, the creators of Jumpgate, have been working on an MMO featuring car battles in an apocolypitc future-setting (think Mad Max) entitled Auto Assault. I was privileged enough to play the beta from the third wave and the game has grown and improved immensely since that time.
The Backstory
Auto Assault has a story that sets up the action. Alien spores of an unknown origin fall to the Earth and are mostly disregarded by all but the scientific community. These spores spread through the eco-system unbeknownst to the human race but people see an alarming new disease arise that kills most people that contract it. Those who survive the "disease" are gifted with special powers, but suffer skin that changes color as a result of the disease as well as strange glowing eyes. Thus the Mutants were born.
Believing that the changes in the mutants were resultant from a disease, the humans rounded them up and placed them in containment camps. The Mutants who survived were rightfully upset at being imprisoned and began to rebel. Using the powers granted to them by the change, mutants thwarted the oppresive humans. In response, the humans started a program to build cyborgs using nanotechnology to hunt out and fight the rebel Mutants. These cyborgs are the Biomeks, the third playable race, a militaristic society that values efficiency.
The Humans then learned that the changes were due to the alien spores in the atmosphere and that there would be no escape from the mutations caused by the spores as long as any of them remained. They decided to take their brightest and most privileged into ARK units built far beneath the ground and cleanse the Earth of the alien spores with nucleur armaments.
Needless to say, they did not tell the Biomeks or the Mutants (or for that matter, the vast majority of Humans). Yet both the Biomeks and Mutants managed to survive the nucleur holocaust. The Humans have learned that their efforts to cleanse the world of alien spores were ineffective, but they have been studying while in their ARK, and have discovered beam and light technology as well as pscyhic abilities that they believe will allow them to live in the changed world and allow them reclaim it bit by bit.
Thus, the player is allowed to choose between one of three factions who are all violently oppossed to one another, but all have a point of view that the player can be sympathetic to when looking at the situation from their veiwpoint.
The Gameplay
This game is all about car combat, car customization, and destruction. The game's motto is "The Fastest, Most Destructive MMO Ever!" and they live up to their claim. Nearly everything in the game is destructible, and the combat is fast-paced and chaotic.
Driving fast raises your ability to evade fire, but the player must line up enemies in their vehicle's front tactical arc (the tac-arc is a visual in-game device that shows the range and firing width of your weapons). Additionally, players have a mounted 360 degree turret on the top of their vehicles that can be aimed manually by the player or that can be auto-locked onto an enemy by making them a hard-target. The result is quite fun as this maneuvering allows for different types of strategies as well as special encounters that must be fought in new and different ways. For instance, in the Human starting area there is a boss battle with a huge Crawler (a freaky monster creature that evolved from the alien spores) that is most easily beaten if you use kiting tactics to stay out of it's hard-hitting melee attacks, but when playing against a different mob type. . . let's say a car that moves super fast and has long-range weapons, you would want to get in close and stay in close so that the cars can't kite you. Oh yeah, be sure to watch out for the spike strips they like to lay down as the enemy AI will then neatly get out of your weapon's maximum range while pelting you with laser fire.
Auto Assault feels like a mix between an MMO and a single-player game. In fact, while you can group, there is no emphasis on grouping until later in the game when you might wish to join a group to engage in Player vs. Player combat. This is a welcome relief to me, but players who are into MMOs for the grouping aspects may find groups hard to come by if they do not belong to a guild or simply want to play along with friends. Grouping is easy and travel is easy (literally a click of a button), so if you like grouping and already have friends, then it is certainly an option. There is even in-game voice for groups, but at this stage of the beta, I have yet to get it to work.
Crafting fans will find stuff to love in Auto Assault as well. Crafting is currently still seeing the results of a large overhaul performed during the extended beta. However, crafting is performed by gaining salvaged materials as drops from mobs in the game or as drops from the various destructible environments in the game. These materials must then be refined and used to fix broken items that are also found as drops or that can be obtained from a junkyard NPC shop. Crafters can also experiment on items by adding additional parts that might result in special effects being placed on their item in addition to the stats previously shown.
If you hate crafting, then you needn't worry. All of the loot in the game is dynamic, so stats are all over the place and people will want different stats in items based on their personal play style. There is no "best" weapon, and crafting opens up more options, but is difficult enough that it is difficult to craft at your level.
Finding loot, comparing stats, and upgrading your car is part of the appeal of the game. In addition to these bits of fun, you can also gain trophy drops that can be used at body-shops to pimp out your ride with cool tricks and trims.
The Final Word
Auto Assault is still definitely in beta. The current build suffers from a stifling number of content gaps that leave players having to grind up levels by killing mobs over and over to get high enough level to beat missions that they are given. Also, the PvP zones since the major overhaul they instituted have yet to be seen. Also missing so far are changes to the arena UI and functionality . Hopefully, the PvP will be an excellent endgame that is fun and rewarding, but we've yet to see it in it's new and improved form (All of this IS getting work and should be in by release), so this content cannot yet be previewed.
Despite these problems, the core gameplay in Auto Assault is quite good, and there are still a few months of beta left in which to fix the content gaps and to enable and test the PvP. There is fun to be had here, and fans of apocolyptic settings, and car shoot 'em ups should pick up a preorder in order to get beta access and the headstart in the live game that NCSoft customarilly offers as a bonus for preordering.
The Backstory
Auto Assault has a story that sets up the action. Alien spores of an unknown origin fall to the Earth and are mostly disregarded by all but the scientific community. These spores spread through the eco-system unbeknownst to the human race but people see an alarming new disease arise that kills most people that contract it. Those who survive the "disease" are gifted with special powers, but suffer skin that changes color as a result of the disease as well as strange glowing eyes. Thus the Mutants were born.
Believing that the changes in the mutants were resultant from a disease, the humans rounded them up and placed them in containment camps. The Mutants who survived were rightfully upset at being imprisoned and began to rebel. Using the powers granted to them by the change, mutants thwarted the oppresive humans. In response, the humans started a program to build cyborgs using nanotechnology to hunt out and fight the rebel Mutants. These cyborgs are the Biomeks, the third playable race, a militaristic society that values efficiency.
The Humans then learned that the changes were due to the alien spores in the atmosphere and that there would be no escape from the mutations caused by the spores as long as any of them remained. They decided to take their brightest and most privileged into ARK units built far beneath the ground and cleanse the Earth of the alien spores with nucleur armaments.
Needless to say, they did not tell the Biomeks or the Mutants (or for that matter, the vast majority of Humans). Yet both the Biomeks and Mutants managed to survive the nucleur holocaust. The Humans have learned that their efforts to cleanse the world of alien spores were ineffective, but they have been studying while in their ARK, and have discovered beam and light technology as well as pscyhic abilities that they believe will allow them to live in the changed world and allow them reclaim it bit by bit.
Thus, the player is allowed to choose between one of three factions who are all violently oppossed to one another, but all have a point of view that the player can be sympathetic to when looking at the situation from their veiwpoint.
The Gameplay
This game is all about car combat, car customization, and destruction. The game's motto is "The Fastest, Most Destructive MMO Ever!" and they live up to their claim. Nearly everything in the game is destructible, and the combat is fast-paced and chaotic.
Driving fast raises your ability to evade fire, but the player must line up enemies in their vehicle's front tactical arc (the tac-arc is a visual in-game device that shows the range and firing width of your weapons). Additionally, players have a mounted 360 degree turret on the top of their vehicles that can be aimed manually by the player or that can be auto-locked onto an enemy by making them a hard-target. The result is quite fun as this maneuvering allows for different types of strategies as well as special encounters that must be fought in new and different ways. For instance, in the Human starting area there is a boss battle with a huge Crawler (a freaky monster creature that evolved from the alien spores) that is most easily beaten if you use kiting tactics to stay out of it's hard-hitting melee attacks, but when playing against a different mob type. . . let's say a car that moves super fast and has long-range weapons, you would want to get in close and stay in close so that the cars can't kite you. Oh yeah, be sure to watch out for the spike strips they like to lay down as the enemy AI will then neatly get out of your weapon's maximum range while pelting you with laser fire.
Auto Assault feels like a mix between an MMO and a single-player game. In fact, while you can group, there is no emphasis on grouping until later in the game when you might wish to join a group to engage in Player vs. Player combat. This is a welcome relief to me, but players who are into MMOs for the grouping aspects may find groups hard to come by if they do not belong to a guild or simply want to play along with friends. Grouping is easy and travel is easy (literally a click of a button), so if you like grouping and already have friends, then it is certainly an option. There is even in-game voice for groups, but at this stage of the beta, I have yet to get it to work.
Crafting fans will find stuff to love in Auto Assault as well. Crafting is currently still seeing the results of a large overhaul performed during the extended beta. However, crafting is performed by gaining salvaged materials as drops from mobs in the game or as drops from the various destructible environments in the game. These materials must then be refined and used to fix broken items that are also found as drops or that can be obtained from a junkyard NPC shop. Crafters can also experiment on items by adding additional parts that might result in special effects being placed on their item in addition to the stats previously shown.
If you hate crafting, then you needn't worry. All of the loot in the game is dynamic, so stats are all over the place and people will want different stats in items based on their personal play style. There is no "best" weapon, and crafting opens up more options, but is difficult enough that it is difficult to craft at your level.
Finding loot, comparing stats, and upgrading your car is part of the appeal of the game. In addition to these bits of fun, you can also gain trophy drops that can be used at body-shops to pimp out your ride with cool tricks and trims.
The Final Word
Auto Assault is still definitely in beta. The current build suffers from a stifling number of content gaps that leave players having to grind up levels by killing mobs over and over to get high enough level to beat missions that they are given. Also, the PvP zones since the major overhaul they instituted have yet to be seen. Also missing so far are changes to the arena UI and functionality . Hopefully, the PvP will be an excellent endgame that is fun and rewarding, but we've yet to see it in it's new and improved form (All of this IS getting work and should be in by release), so this content cannot yet be previewed.
Despite these problems, the core gameplay in Auto Assault is quite good, and there are still a few months of beta left in which to fix the content gaps and to enable and test the PvP. There is fun to be had here, and fans of apocolyptic settings, and car shoot 'em ups should pick up a preorder in order to get beta access and the headstart in the live game that NCSoft customarilly offers as a bonus for preordering.