Auto Assault

 “Welcome to the art of destruction,” said David Swofford, press relations for NCsoft.

The event was for Auto Assault Online, the pending NCsoft/NetDevil massively multiplayer online PC title, held at the Dolby Laboratory in San Francisco. The evening was not only to learn more about changes talking place in the game, but also to afford media some hands-on time with the game.

Auto Assault takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where three races battle for control of the world. Humans, mutants and biomeks use various vehicles to travel the highways and byways of the world, engaging in player-versus-environment and player-versus-player action.

The action is fast-paced, the game is geared for players to jump in and play with little time spent learning controls. The version displayed in San Francisco still has polishing that needs to be applied. The beta event is not scheduled until this summer.

The game itself is “mission-centric,” but will allow for group/convoy missions as well as solo play. There is a main story arc as well as side arcs that will keep players busy. There is also a crafting system that is deep, and will enable players to create items for the vehicles (players are allowed a garage and the opportunity to own several vehicles), and memorize the recipes to recreate special items with little trouble.

There are four classes of characters/vehicle types within the game: tanks, the officer class (which is akin to the pet classes of more traditional MMOs), the engineer class (scavenger class that can do field repair and is the only class to drive the bigger rigs), and the ranger class (sports DoTs – damage over time – attacks, and stealth attacks). Handling and acceleration is all vehicle-specific.

While the game has some PvP areas, or will when it releases, the majority of the highways are PvE, with side exits that lead to instanced areas. But where Auto Assault scores bigger in the PvP aspect is when the player enters a city. Cities are safe zones from the vehicular mayhem that takes place elsewhere, but offer players a variety of other options, one of which is the arena. The arena will offer players the opportunity to compete for big rewards and cross-server compete. There will also be a ladder-ranking competition. Players can compete for not just top ranking on their server but across all servers. And there may be clan-versus-clan cross-server PvP action as well.

Players will be able to compete for resource nodes, and there will be endless supplies of ammunition and no death penalty. That’s right, when you die, you don’t incur a penalty, are transported back to the nearest repair station with only a small amount of hit points available.

“We wanted to go more fun than reality,” stated NetDevil’s Scott Brown, who also stated “all missions are handcrafted.”

“We call the game an action RPG,” he said.

The game uses the Havok physics engine, and players will level up and achieve more stats, but these are tied to the vehicles, not to the player. With the Inc transport system, players can go across the world quickly. And, of course, the vehicles are customizable.

But how does the game perform?

The default keyboard controls rely on the W, A, S, D for movement, while the targeting, with the left mouse control seemed a little hard. The weapons tended to lock-on in an arc, and anything that fell within that arc could get tagged with the weapons fire. Weapons can overheat if you equip your vehicle with weapons that are higher than the initial configuration of the machine can handle. You can upgrade your weapon and end up with heavy-duty firepower that rarely has downtime. Almost everything you attack has the potential to drop items, which can either be used to advance a quest, to upgrade, to use in crafting, or to sell.

The right click is how you fire your weapons. The environments are almost total destructible, but the enemy in the open zones have similar evade patterns – at this stage – and you can easily find a maneuver pattern which does a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

The controls do have a default for auto-run, which is a wonderful respite to constantly holding down the W key to keep the vehicle in motion, but powerslides to whip around and continue your weapons barrage against weakening enemy vehicles are not only possible but quite a bit of fun to pull off.

The camera angle does not seem to allow a “look” capability, and while you can zoom in tighter on your vehicle, the viewpoint is from above and behind the vehicle.

The sound was presented in Dolby 5.1 and was full of engine noises, the explosions of environments taking damage, and the roar of engines. Graphically the game looked very good, and the physics were wonderfully realized.

Because this game is built for gamers to have fun, there are little deterrents to continuous action – if you flip your vehicle, you will be righted quickly. And there were onscreen prompts to guide you to mission objectives and action.

With so many waiting to take time behind the wheel, the hands-on time was relatively short, and there was no time to explore the crafting elements. The ladder/tournament aspects, cross-server competition, the crafting and customization are the elements that will likely give Auto Assault the staying power for the long haul in the MMO genre.