Delta Testing: Auto Assault

As I was finishing my Christmas shopping I happened to wander into an electronics store and I happened to wander to where they kept the video games (This was, by the way, entirely not an excuse to find the Guitar Hero display again and jam out more than is healthy. I mean, it's not like I'm trying to get good enough that a crowd of fellow shoppers gathers and sets off the fire suppression system with their raised lighters or anything. Not at all.). And while I was there, of course, I happened to see that Auto Assault was still on the shelves. That's not at all surprising as it was only released April of this year. It also wasn't that surprising to see it was in the bargain bin – retailing for only $10[1]. I hate to say it – and no offense meant to the fine people who play the game - but from what I've seen and heard Auto Assault is a game that's in trouble. Just released and already it's sunk into the pack of second or third tier games that people play, you know, instead of World of Warcraft. I'm a sucker for an underdog so I thought if everyone was ignoring the game then there just might be something to it.

Now, having played the game, I can see that the general consensus of the buying public was, in fact, pretty close to the mark. It's not that Auto Assault is a bad game, mind, it just doesn't really distinguish itself in any meaningful way. Odd, really, in a game that's based on a post-apocalyptic Mad Max inspired wasteland of cars and machine gun with an emphasis on fast-paced mobile combat. But, for me anyway, it's just yet another MMO[2]. There's nothing that I haven't seen or done in a dozen other games – just dressed up in a new skin. It was, well, boring and that's the most damning thing I can say about any game I'm playing.

I should say, though, that I find the typical MMO immensely boring. That leveling treadmill that's at the heart of such games – to say nothing of the stagnant elder game of raiding this and ganking that – just doesn't appeal to me. It gets repetitive, it gets old, and it gets boring fast (And I say this having spent hours treking around to get an Icy Dragon Sword or capture an obscure and useless skill in Guild Wars. It's not that I'm completely opposed to treadmills - it's just that I need them to be better disguised.) and I just plain don't like it. What I need to play, basically, is a game that has some of those elements but one that goes about it in a different way. Where Auto Assault innovates is in the setting and the skins not in the mechanics.

As for those mechanics, well, I have problems there too. Now the game has some very interesting twists but, as I said, those twists are largely related to filling the numbers off of pre-existing genre conventions.

Let's start with the various classes. There are twelve – four for each of the three races. However, each of those classes is mirrored by one in the other two races so there's basically four kinds of classes with three different variations. Now, there are some differences in the way they play and their skills but the four classes can be broken down into the following four categories – The Tank – a frontline fighter designed to soak up damage with their heavier armor. The Healer – a supporting backliner who's in charge of keeping their teammates in good fighting order. The Creator – summons or otherwise controls legions of pets or turrets that assist. The Scout – relies on stealth and being able to hit hard and get away fast. Which, really, is about all you need in a game like this. And there are some interesting options to play with thanks to the healthy (but level restricted) lines of skills available.

In game, although I sampled as much as I could stomach, I went with the regenerating mutants (Recovering health felt like it would be the best racial advantage – I hate waiting around while my health regens or having to wolf down heal pot after heal pot because the game lacks other gold sinks. And, in my experience, it was a plus in the lower levels. It just got outmoded very quickly.) over the partially shielded humans and the better armored biomeks. And when it came time to pick out a class I went with the mutant's Tank, the Terminator. Although you might think my avatar was something out of an action flick with a bad german accent and a sweet leather wardrobe (Or even something crazy like governor of the most populous state in the nation, maybe) it looked like nothing so much as a particularly lithe Ork from Warhammer 40k outfitted in bondage gear. Each character also gets a car and mine was no different – it was a big, bulky thing that resembled a Hummer. Put together, my Terminator looked like a finely tuned ass-kicking machine and, well, that's what I like to play as, really.

But that wasn't why I picked the Terminator – see, although I wasn't aware of the depths and fine points of the class system the four categories were pretty apparent to me from the onset. And when confronted with a new game my initial impulse is to pick the tank class. Not because that happens to be my most favorite role to play – that honor goes to the healer/support[3] – but because in any given game it's probably the simplest class to play. You don't need to know the complexities of the system, you don't have to memorize countless statistical information to figure the most optimum move at any game state, no, you just have to find a target and hit them as hard as you can. Over and over until they fall down. Then you move onto the next. If you can you try and keep their attention on you so they don't go and hurt your squishier friends. But, really, it's as simple as getting up in someone's face and hitting the attack button. Playing more complicated classes is something I do later after I pick up more about how the game works. Or after I've plumbed the depths of that particular ruleset's tank – make no mistake, the modern tank usually has some interesting wrinkles and options to explore that make them rival the complexity of other classes, they're just the easiest class to learn not necessarily the quickest one to master.

The Terminator does play quite a bit like the stereotypical tank, of course, and it proved to be both deadly and resilient in combat. Fights in Auto Assault play out a lot like first person shooters, to me anyway, as you lock onto a target – aiming is, fortunately automatic – and then proceed to blast away while circle straffing. Everything, every skill, every battle item is perfectly usable while you're on the move so it's a fluid fast paced affair. And, as a Terminator I was able to just drive in guns blazing. Other classes had to be a bit more careful or reliant on their special abilities but for my Terminator the standard attack and a nuke or two took care of most everything – well, everything within my level range, at least. And I was soon looting newer and better weapons with which to blow various things away.

But it's there that the game lost me, I think. While I like making the numbers I'm killing things with get bigger as much as the next min/maxer and there were plenty of stats on the weapons to play around with – you had your basic damage range, your damage type, refire rate, your heat (which affected how long you could fire the weapon before you needed to stop and let it cool down – as an alternative to having any sort of ammunition, I'd wager) production, your range, and your arc of fire (since aiming's automatic all the weapons have a cone within which they'll hit any enemy in range so you have wide cones and narrow cones), on top of any “magical” bonuses that might be applied to the gun – after a while it became pointless. Comparing between guns to scrape a few more points of DPS wasn't all that exciting when I realized that I was still in the low levels and by the time I got to higher levels those guns (and the various pieces of armor that also get equiped to the car.) would be obsolete. There wasn't any point in spending too much time worrying about what was better than what, I just looked for the bigger numbers and slapped it on. But, at the same time, if I wanted to compete at those higher levels I'd want to know exactly what was best to have: a higher refire rate or longer range? And probably a host of other things that weren't readily apparent to me.

The game was doing a poor job of teaching.

Not the very basics like how to use skills or how to select an enemy to target, of course. But the intermediate skills beyond that. I mentioned that combat was a circle-straffing affair but that's only for me because I happen to have played an FPS or two and know that staying in place is a sure way to get a headshot, so to speak. And that circling around your enemy is the optimal solution for keeping moving and keeping them in range and a stable target all at the same time. But if I hadn't known that already I certainly wouldn't have learned it by playing Auto Assault – not from any tutorial, anyway[4]. And that's far from the only example. There's a wealth of options and customizations to explore in the game. Each class had their own special toggles near their health bar, for instance, my Terminator could when their health was low survive until their mana/energy was depleted as well by trading some speed or offensive power. Effectively extending their health bar, basically. The healer classes could provide various boosts to their teammates at the cost of constantly losing some energy. And the output of your engine can be altered to provide more speed, more offense, or more defense or some combination of two of those at the cost of the remaining. This was a fact I only found out after reading through one guide or another – that some enemies could only be engaged if you were redlining your speed (As a Terminator, anyway, other classes had quicker vehicles while the tanks focused on being the best armored so it made them a bit lumbering, comparatively speaking.). And, well, I didn't read through any manual so it was probably mentioned there. But I never read any manuals – not for games – and I'm far from the only one. I'm not an idiot and I figure I can pick up the game as I go along.

And I also figure out if I can't figure out the game then it's really not worth playing. If designers want to make sure that kind of player stays interested then they'd be well put to make sure that their game mechanics are simple enough or well demonstrated enough so they lose any mystique.

It's an annoyance I can play through, of course – my beloved Guild Wars is absolutely brutal on people who don't know what they're doing[5] – but combined with a lengthy and repetitive treadmill I'm quick to opt out. And the treadmill was very apparent in Auto Assault. Sure there were numerous quests to level through but after a while there's only so much of “kill x of y” that I can take before looking at my watch.

In the final accounting, I hit level 11 with my Terminator, lv5 with the biomek version, the Champion, and barely touched characters of the other ten classes. And I played my fifteen day trial period for roughly a week (Hey, sunk costs, I don't feel bad about walking away from a poor investment). My account ran out before I could find anyone to twink with all my stuff – not that I had much but since I was going to be disappearing, I figured I should try and give someone else at least a little leg up. As far as community goes, I have no complaints. People playing Auto Assault were courteous and helpful enough (I didn't notice any real differences between the crowds playing each race but, then, I spent most of my time as a mutant.). The game population's small enough that all the server's have been condensed into a single one at this point. There's a global chat linking all players of a particular race and there was always someone looking for trade or grouping up – a few names popped up more than once and it seemed like there was a group of high leveled regulars who enjoyed playing with each other. The newbie lands I didn't advance past were sparse and there were few other people to bump into but the ones I did were sociable enough. I wish them the best of luck and hope their dying game lasts long enough for them. I'm just not going to be there with them. And I'd recommend the game to just about no one except the people already playing it. There are different games that do the things Auto Assault does better and it really only appeals to the market it's already captured – the fanatics.

So, long story short, I played the game, didn't like it, and have absolutely no interest in paying for the privilege.

Recommendation: Fun for a while but gets old fast. This one's an avoid.

Next up: I'm looking into options but I've got Saga of Ryzom all loaded up and waiting (It's an unlimited free trial of the starting area so there's no real rush.)

[1] - A bit of looking around found my old mistress, Guild Wars, still going for full price and with some decent shelf space. I'm not sure if having a lot of copies on the shelves is a good thing or a bad one – probably good because it means the retailer expects them to move. But then again, they were there and not gone which might be seen as a bad sign. They didn't have the primest of prime space, though, as that was reserved for WoW - of course. What I found especially interesting was that they had a bunch of floating, caseless CDs going for $2 that featured the same 10 day trial that's available on their website for free. So, basically, people pay for a CD (And, of course, the expense of warehousing and shelving all those units). But, well, it wouldn't be there if it didn't sell.

[2] – A YAM, perhaps? Or would YAMMO be better...

[3] - What can I say? Support classes tend to be overlooked and, at the same time, highly valuable to any group or team. I tend to gravitate towards that because it's a thankless task and I'm not really dependent on the acknowledgment of others. I mean its makes me feel good to help others and I certainly appreciate being, well, appreciated from time to time, but I don't require constant feedback. I am, of course, though, completely insane.

[4] – And since the game would presumably be drawing on an audience of people who were from other MMOs, they'd most likely think of combat as a static affair between two relatively unmoving objects. You stand there and slug it out basically. You can do this in Auto Assault but, as the game will tell you, moving objects are harder to hit (Probably some shifting of accuracy values somehow when you're moving rather than any real projectile avoiding) so you're best to keep your pedal on the metal.

[5] – The difference there is that Guild Wars makes it both incredibly easy to make mistakes but also completely painless to correct those mistakes. For the most part, anyway. But, for instance, if you slot the wrong skill then you can just change them around. You'll have more than enough to tailor to any situation – and some of them will be useful in some situations and not in others – that you won't need to worry about refunding your points and starting over again. With all those options you're encouraged to experiment because the price of failure isn't very daunting. And the benefits – learning how to use and combine your skills better – is high. Not the only game to play like that, of course, but it's pretty rare in an MMO.