Gamma Testing: Auto Assault

Playing a free trial of Auto Assault. Just as a remaindered for those among my fanbase who are not quite yet rabid enough to follow my every footstep.

I now remember why I never tried the game’s demo before. It’s 10Gigs. That’s a freaking huuuuuge file to someone who remembers it was amazing when games spread over more than one floppy disk (As an aside, I have two 200+GB harddrives currently mounted in BaseStar One. And they’re both full to the brim with files, movies, pictures, music, games, and whatever else I’ve stuffed them with. It’s not that I don’t have the space it’s that I had to get rid of some other things I was saving. Sigh, I’m going to have to break down and get some form of eternal storage because my poor, old CD-R just isn’t up to the task of shunting my data into a more permanent, archival form any more.) and when you throw in the installer and the time to patch, I’ve been waiting since last night to actually start playing. Yet again, this is another thing that reminds me of why I love Guild Wars (And can’t stand more traditional MMOs with their patch based updates that ignore streaming technologies. They’re learning, though. Look at WoW - you can walk the entire world and not hit a load screen between zones. Give it a couple years and see what happens.). All it took to get me into the game, originally, was a 90some kb installer and maybe five to ten minutes of installing and registering before I was playing. These days it’s ballooned to maybe a gig or two but in the early days – when other games were bloating to 4 or 5GBs, Guild Wars made a point of keeping below 1G. As a note to any designers – that’s a good thing. Bloated design is poor design and things should get simpler as they get better not bigger. Keeping your product accessible means that more people are likely to at least sample it. And that means more people are likely to stick around and enjoy it. 10Gigs of a game I’m only playing for 15 days and am hardly going to see all of is a colossal waste and a real barrier for me playing the game. Totally imba imho! And the little message that says “Patching – this may take a few minutes” for a freaking hour? Pisses me off no end.

Sorry, that old playtester hat is hard to put down. But, well, now I’m going to shift gears – so to speak – and talk more about the game itself. Personally, I find games of this sort fascinating. Some team of developers, programmers, designers, marketers and everything else spends years working and refining their product – one that’s just a little step away from the norm – and the collective reaction from the public is a big “so what?”. It’s the failed ideas and concepts that are often the most informative, after all. But, well, Auto Assault – I find – is a solid game but not a spectacular one. It takes a fresh approach to the MMO genre – you get to play as Mad Max, basically, with the serial numbers filed off – while sticking closer to some of its conventions than I would have guessed.

Starting the game I selected a Mutant Champion as the first class I’d play and spent my first game session powerleveling all the way up to the 10^th level (I know, it’s a sickness.). Now, I could care less about what the class is called just what it does. In this sort of game, at least, I’m a stat junkie. I want the character that’s going to give me the best chance of playing the game the way I’d like to play it. Mutants, as a race, have a built in bonus to their defense – they constantly regenerate health at a slow but steady rate. Figuring this would mean that if I was ever injured I’d be able to heal myself automatically and not have to sit around so much I was sold on that particular choice. Of the other races – Humans and Biomeks (think Cyborgs) – humans have a forceshield which also regenerates which, I admit, was tempting. But, fearing a Protoss situation where although the shield might come back their actual hitpoints would be extremely difficult to regain I passed – I’m a fan of the underplayed races, anyway. Biomeks just have more hitpoints than the others. As for the class, I went with Champion because it was, to my eye, the closest thing to a warrior or tank available. High offense, lots of defense, just a character class that’s out to dish out some punishment. That’s exactly what I was in the mood for when I was rolling up a character and that’s pretty much what I’ve gotten. Champions seem to agree with my playstyle. The regeneration was very nice. At lower levels. Now that I’m level 10 and have well over 200 hit points regenerating less than one a second isn’t all that effective. There are ways to upgrade that ability, of course, but for it to feel effective to me, I’d need to get about 1% of my total health back in a second – ideally, I’d like all my health back inside of a minute but that’s unrealistically fast as far as the designers are concerned, I’m sure – and I can’t get that at my level. The marginal upgrades to my regen I could get just aren’t worth the cost to me at right now.

Once in-game I was initially disappointed with the game. Oh, the interface and everything is beautiful and the hotkey bar to fill with goodies was like an old friend to someone who’s cut their teeth on Guild Wars. But the game seemed a little clunky and the controls were a bit difficult, for me, to manage. But, I kept at it and I discovered why I was initially put off by the driving. I was trying to strafe. Unlike most games there’s momentum when moving your character around. Since I’m using the old mouse/WASD – a controller format which is not particularly well suited to a driving game – it took a bit of getting used to having to brake and turn and power-slide and all the rest. Once I did, I stopped getting stuck or crashing into things. Otherwise the interface is clean, clear, and easy to use. There’s a lot of customizability – the power from your engine can be redistributed, for example, to give you more speed or more firepower or better armor at the cost of the other two, for example, and it’s possible to switch it on the fly (which I’m still getting a hang on) – although the character creation screen leaves a bit to be desired (But, then, I’ve seen the glory that is CoH’s character creation so I’m a bit spoiled. It does the job.). And plenty of ways of upgrading your character/car and plenty of stats and modifiers for those upgrades. There’s a lot of depth involved in tricking out your ride and I’m just getting a feel for it. I mean, for your weapons is it better to have a higher DPS or a longer range? Or is the other way around? I have no idea (I’ve deliberately not sought out the sorts of places this kind of information can be found. I’m not trying to play this game for the rest of my life so I figure if I can’t pick up these things on my own, at least a bit, I probably never will.) but it’s interesting to figure it out.

Combat is fast. Since it’s between cars, mostly, there’s a lot more movement than the typical MMO. It’s much more like an FPS where you’ll be constantly moving, circle strafing and pumping ammunition into your target until you or they drop. Each class has its own special abilities that can be used in combat and out further opening up possibilities. I ran up to level 10 the other day just to see the second tier of skills and how they’d play. Of my two favorites (and I have absolutely no idea what their names actually are nor do I care to learn) one lets me regenerate a little bit of health over a short time at the cost of losing the ability to fire a weapon – it’s saved me a few times and it’s great to speed recovery as I’m rolling towards my next waypoint. Now that I’ve sampled the other skills available, I’m going to invest heavily in it so it becomes even more effective. My other fave is a nuke, in so many words, a skill that does massive damage to any one target with a built in speed debuff. On lower levels it was almost assuredly an instant kill. At the level I’m at now it’s not so lethal but it still takes a good chunk out of an opponent so I can soften them up with my guns. I’ve only had one death and that was when I tried to take on three lv12 creatures with my cocky little lv8 death dealer. It doesn’t bother me much because of the lack of a death penalty and I’ve been much more cautious since.

At level 10 I’m still stuck in newbieville so I’ve yet to sample the PvP opportunities. I’m sure that I’ll stink up the joint at first but I intend to hop into it as soon as I’m able. Should have a real deathmatch feeling to it, if PvE combat is any indication. High end raiding content, so to speak, is likewise out of my range. I’ve yet to even party with anyone as I’ve been able to advance rapidly through solo play. As I expected, most of my XP has come from the many quests scattered throughout the land and I’ve been completing them as the NPCs were my drug dealers. As for the quest themselves, well, they’re nothing out of the ordinary. Some text box dialogs for flavor and then it’s off on a fetch quest or a snipe hunt or to pull this lever or that. Hopefully, later opportunities will be much better – more original and grander in scope – because there’s only so much “kill x of creature y to get drop z” that I can take. Tomorrow I’m going to sample a few other classes and see how the other races play. Then, I think I’m going to track down some leveling guides and maps so I can work my way out of the training grounds as quickly as possible (I am on a 15 day timer here) and hopefully get to see some of the cooler stuff.

One of the things that surprised me was the depth and complexity of the crafting system. It’s easily as complex as some I’ve seen in other games. Again, there are a lot of options and avenues to explore in taking apart and putting back together items to get something new. I haven’t done much of it myself because that’s really not my type of game and I’m more than a little overwhelmed by all the moving parts at the moment. There’s just sooo much (I’ve even acquired player housing along the way.) and although it’s familiar it’s also not quite the same as everything’s been given high-tech, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, auto-mechanic names and concepts. Unless I find a good resource, I’m just not sure where to start or what good it’ll do me so I haven’t bothered.

Until I see more I’m going to reserve a decisive judgment for or against the game. Of my limited impression so far, I’m not going to be opening up a paid account. It’s fun enough that I’ll exhaust my trial account (and, probably myself) but I’m not sold on the game. And it’s getting a little boring. It’s got that “NCSoft” feel to its gameplay and I’m definitely a fan of that. But, well, here’s my thing at the moment: When loading between zones there’s a little progress bar. In other games it gives you a percentage or lets you know what files are being unloaded and unpacked or whatever. But in Auto Assault the conceit is that you’re downloading data from a satellite and the developers have gotten extremely cute with it. That little bar say all kinds of things like “checking core temperature” and “scraping elf paste off of wheels”. I’ll probably tire of it the more I see it but, at the moment, I find it mildly amusing (I’m a hard laugh to get). It’s exactly the sort of tongue-in-cheek, out of left field humor I was expecting from the game. But, elsewhere on the loading screen are descriptions of the zone you’re about to rez into. Well, if I may be unkind, those are crap. Filled with dry text from the game’s voluminous lore. Which, I’m sure someone worked very long and hard on it, and I even know a few people who do that sort of thing, but it’s just not that important. And it’s that sort of thing that’s filling the text boxes for the quests and everything else. I’d much rather have a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and pokes fun at genre conventions (and it has a lot to jab at because it’s drawing from so much) with more than a little gleeful irreverence. In short, the game’s taking itself too seriously and it’s nowhere good enough to do that. This isn’t LoTRO with a vibrant backstory and a living game world with a dense mythology. It’s a little sci-fi MMO where people drive around in cars, it needs to loosen up a lot. For me, anyways. But, I'll let you know how I really feel in a few weeks, hopefully.