Auto Assault for PC

by NCsoft Corporation

Product Features

• Massive multiplayer gaming combines both vehicular combat and roleplaying elements
• Interact fully with the uniquely designed dynamic environment where nearly everything can be destroyed
• Play more than you travel with the aid of a unique map system designed to cut down on traveling and maximize gameplay
• Participate in fully scripted missions designed for both groups and solo gamers
• Experience a realistic environment with the Havok 2 physics engine

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• ASIN: B0007D9OZC
• Item model number: 892566000606
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 7, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,116 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Players create characters who specialize in vehicular assault, driving through the hostile environment for power, wealth, and fame. Solo players, cooperative players, and PvP (player vs player) gamers will all find something to do, making friends (or enemies) along the way.

Take a spin through the Auto Assault universe, and here's what you can expect:

Destroy anything that moves--and most things that don't.

Design your own character

• Massively multiplayer gaming at the wheel of your combat automobiles
• A uniquely destructible world where you can destroy everything that moves (and most things that don't)
• Realistic effects! The Havok 2 physics engine makes jumping ravines, smashing through barriers, and sending buildings crumbling to the ground incredibly realistic
• Unique mission system--level up while playing, rather than playing to level up
• 3 distinct player races, each with an individualized, epic mission campaign
• Unprecedented world map system minimizes travel time and maximizes actual gameplay
• Intricate handcrafted map generation--highways, enemies, and spontaneous world map events allow for virtually limitless replay ability
• Highly scripted scenarios: solo, group, and common areas
• Gain fame in the arenas, create wealth by trading, or complete missions to advance your standing

Have you played other MMOGs before? Here's a few more features that might interest you:

• No heavy death penalties.. you'll never lose hours or days of progress
• Road maps and airlift system minimize travel times, getting you to the action faster
• Demanding action-oriented gameplay, where collision and momentum matter.. no click-and-wait combat
• Scripted PvE campaigns for solo and cooperative provide hours of enjoyable questing
• Blueprint crafting system allows for experimentation or reliability for all character classes
• Prefixed & enhanced loot generation means the same base item can have different stats & capabilities
• Unique and varied special f/x sounds and a professionally composed soundtrack for each environment
• You can actually have fun and make progress in small amounts of time.. even playing solo!

Product Description

Massively multiplayer gaming at the wheel of your combat automobiles!

Players create characters who specialize in vehicular assault, driving through the hostileenvironment for power, wealth, and fame. Solo players, cooperative players, and PvP (player vs player) gamers will all find something to do, making friends (or enemies) along the way.

Take a spin through the Auto Assault universe, and here's whatyou can expect:

• Massively multiplayer gaming at the wheel of your combat automobiles
• A uniquely destructible world where you can destroy everything that moves (and most things that don't)
• Realisticeffects! The Havok 2 physics engine makes jumping ravines, smashing through barriers, and sending buildings crumbling to the ground incredibly realistic
• Unique mission system--level up while playing, rather than playing to levelup
• 3 distinct player races, each with an individualized, epic mission campaign
• Unprecedented world map system minimizes travel time and maximizes actual gameplay
• Intricate handcrafted map generation--highways,enemies, and spontaneous world map events allow for virtually limitless replay ability
• Highly scripted scenarios: solo, group, and common areas
• Gain fame in the arenas, create wealth by trading, or complete missions toadvance your standing

Have you played other MMOGs before? Here's a few more features that might interest you:

• No heavy death penalties.. you'll never lose hours or days of progress
• Road maps and airliftsystem minimize travel times, getting you to the action faster
• Demanding action-oriented gameplay, where collision and momentum matter.. no click-and-wait combat
• Scripted PvE campaigns for solo and cooperative providehours of enjoyable

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This online game is now shut down., October 8, 2007

By 

S. Brady "PC617" (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Auto Assault for PC (CD-ROM)

The Auto Assault servers shut down as of the end of August 2007. With no single-player capability, this game will no longer function.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent game, with it's own little problems., April 22, 2006

By 

Kevin Fee "Hydrith" (Anchorage, AK USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Auto Assault for PC (CD-ROM)

Another excellent game published by NCSoft, Auto Assault excels at keeping players entertained by bringing back the pleasures of Twisted Metal in the form of an MMO. But unlike Twisted Metal, Auto Assault boasts fully destructible environments, realistic game physics, and an impressive graphics engine that makes the game incredible fun to play. And, to make the game easier to play with friends, Auto Assault incorporates built-in voice chat, something that many other MMOs do not.

What Auto Assault offers in terms of PvP action makes the game equally exciting. While combat between factions is limited to specific zones, there is Arena-based PvP where players compete in ladder-type tournaments for in-game cash and experience.

But, like many MMOs freshly released to the public, it has it's own set of problems. Every now and then, you'll see the Bug Report window come up, and ask you to report what's happened to the technical support teams. While it can be irritating, it does help the tech support teams to fix the game (and trust me, they do fix the problems :D).

Overall, at it's current phase, Auto Assault is an excellent game. Once several of the in-game problems get fixed, it will be outright incredible.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous promise- a blast to play!, April 24, 2006

By 

James Bjork "saxguy007" (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Auto Assault for PC (CD-ROM)

In a nutshell, after 6+ years of swinging swords or throwing fireballs in cyber-action, I was desperate for a change of pace, where I could play some kind of sci-fi game that captured why I loved Steve Jackson's Car Wars paper chit and dice game, as well as the Mad Max movies. I was hoping that AA would give me this kind of online virtual on-line adventure, with all the staples one expects from an on MMOPRG game, including:

Lush, graphical gameworld

Flavorful backstory of said world as played out via npcs and quests

Interesting ways of advancing character besides rinse-n-repeat grinding of the same few classes of mobs at "camps"

Meaningful but not griefing-prone PvP

Tactically-rich combat for both PvP and PvE

Player-made gear via crafting

Intuitive user interfaces for action as well as for character assets and development

Context-sensitive help menus or pop-ups.

Based on what I have seen in several sessions of play, Auto Assault has delivered, big time. Many reviews by individual gamers on gaming sites have been unfavorable. However, many of these reviews (as well as positive reviews) illustrate why some select few are paid to review things, while most hacks like me are not. Professional reviewers are able to view and critique a film, for example, BASED ON WHAT THE FILM-MAKERS were trying to accomplish. Conversely, the slams several forum reviewers have made about this game are like ripping on The Bridges of Madison County because there were no flaming car chases, or like ripping on The Matrix because it didn't have enough tender dialogue between Neo and his mate.

This game was explicitly designed to be a hybrid between the move-your-avatar-to-other-virtual-avatar and stab-it-so-that-you-can-get-resources-to-get-even-better-gear-so-you-can-gank-even-tougher-code-driven-algorithms....with the arcade feel of an auto-racer. If you like car-racing action, and want to enjoy something extra in the way of a gradual progression of your own abilities and tricking out your ride, then this game is for you. If manual-dexterity-based car racing and the post-apocalyptic genre are not your thing, then you will not. Also, according to many who slam this game, it would seem that any new MMORPG stinks unless it has EACH and ALL of:

The graphics of EQ2

The extensive gameworld of 5+ years of EQ1

The flavor of WoW

The PvP of Dark Age of Camelot

The grouping commands and tools of City of Villians

The absence of a monthly fee of Guild Wars.

In the INITIAL RELEASE!!!

IMHO, I think the developers have done a good job of delivering what they intended the game to be. Getting to race around with the challenge of keeping your target in Line-of-fire is a lot more engaging to me than hitting a /stick command to move and stick to a foe and hitting a key to autoattack, or even issue a series of clicks of weapon styles in the same endless cycle.

Another big criticism is "All you do is drive around and blow everything up. I'll be bored within two weeks." Not only is there more to the game than that, but I suspect these same people would be bored with ANY new MMORPG. When I compare the endless series of quests in AA with interesting backstory flavor in the text, I think back to trying to level up toons in EQ years ago, and how absolutely mind-numbing that was! If EQ were launched today, its dated graphics, lack of meaningful weapon styles/skills, and brutal old-school death penalty would have people giving it poor marks.

The fact is, there are only so many ways you can dress up move-your-avatar-to-other-virtual-avatar and-apply-your-damage-algorithm-so-that-you-can-get-resources-to-get-even-better-gear-so-you-can-gank-even-tougher-code-driven-algorithms... So many games are out there that really differ only in the details-how many quests, atmosphere, UI, how they handle character death, how does PvP loot work etc.... At least with AA, the developers overlaid the NOVEL challenge of high-motion, dexterity driven combat atop all the traditional elements of an immersive MMORPG. This game really DOES play differently.

The three factions play markedly differently, and the backstory actually provides some rationale for why the three would be at war with each other. This flavor seeps through in the quests' text, if you actually bother to read them. A few sessions of playing a biomek, and I felt like a borg. Even the background music reflects the different moods of the different factions. In contrast, DAoC never made me feel like a part of a realm, and never really gave flesh to the bones of the conflict-why we should be out fighting others.

The loot system is great! Even going to merchants to get low-end gear, you will find several different variants of the same make and model weapon, but with slightly different DPS, range, and targeting arc. Nice to be able to be able to spend a little more to get a better specimen of the "acme flechette gun."

The one drawback, which is eminently fixeable with patches and expansions, is that the designers made the game so solo-friendly (to enable casual players to not have to blow precious gaming time in cobbling a group), that grouping is actually a disadvantage when coldly calculating XP/hour when considering time to form a group. This will hurt NetDevil, because gamers are not accustomed to paying a monthy fee for a game that they can play all by themselves, like Half-Life.

Bugs are fixable. Nuances of content are fixable. The core designs and mechanics are not. Fortunately, the latter hold great promise, and even if you just play the heck out of this game for the "free" month of online play that comes with purchase, and never subscribe past that, the 10 gigs of content will keep you plenty occupied.

See you on the dangerous, dusty, roads.