Auto Assault - Is that a Healer ? Yes it is! Maybe? I think... :/

The game is called Auto Assault, made by NetDevils and released by NCSoft

Auto what? Most of you have probably never heard of this game... and those of you who have heard of it, probably wished you hadnt. But let me tell you this!

If you've only ever heard of the game, then consider yourself lucky, because some of us actually played it, and I must admit that sometimes I still have bad dreams about playing that game. :p

Looking back at it, (it was released sometime in 2006... it doesnt really matter to be honest, the game would have been considered crap, even if it was released in 1995)

I played the beta, and never picked it up after release... Now some of you might find this a bit unfair, and you'll sling the usual: 'But its Beta! Expect Bugs!' in my face... But let me tell you, the days of public Beta testing as a means for actually finding bugs are OVER!

These days, beta testing is primarily a means for marketing and hyping your game. If your game is full of bugs and plays like poo (50% bugs, 25% poo, 25% gameplay, recipe for epic fail), then dont bother with beta, cause people wont pick it up after release if they dont like what they saw in your buggy and boring beta.

Anyways, back to Auto Assault.

Imagine the following scenario, as this is how I think the concept of this game came about...

I am thinking that perhaps the developers sat in a room together and something like this took place:

Developer 1: 'Holy Moly, Have you guys heard about that World of Warcraft game in development? it has rogues! and pvp!'

and then perhaps one of the other developers would add the following:

Developer 3: 'Maybe we should make our own sort of World of Warcraft? But it has to be really unique... and very special... something that the world hasnt seen before!'

Developer 2: ... (Developer 2 didnt really say much... I think he was thinking about all the cash they were now going to make from their WoW-like but not quite like-WoW game...)

Developer 1: 'Great Idea! Lets take a standard mmorpg, then randomize ALL the names of items, locations, skills, objectives, and mechanisms to make it harder for the players to get into the game! This way, it wont be as easy as WoW to play, and this way we can earn more money on subscription fees before the players quit! err... i mean before the players win the game!!!'

And so they all rejoiced! For they thought they had found the perfect recipe for a WIN mmorpg Concept...

Oh boy they were wrong, werent they ? :P

Sometime later they were ready to present their idea to the gaming world... and we were all eagerly awaiting this brand spanking new concept of 'almost never before seen' mmorpg action adventure... thing... that was soon going to drive us nuts from boredom and frustration over not having a clue if what we just looted was good, bad, or even for our own class to use?!

The concept of this game is simple. Its a post apocalyptic world, something went wrong at some point in the past and now the world is a barren wasteland with swamps and destroyed cities and monsters and mutants everywhere.

You drive a car, or a tank, or a motorcycleish vehicle and shoot monsters and mutants and other vehicles while doing simple and boring grindathon quests like Kill 25 Arglebarglers or Collect 9½ weeks worth of Mutagen.

Then you go back to town, walk around as your human avatar that you spent some time creating in the beginning of the game.. and when you're bored of crafting in town (assuming you can figure out how to do it..)

You then go back to your car and attack the wasteland once more, in a feeble attempt to level up your 'insert random and very confusing class name'

Oh the joy!

All they bloody did was take a cookie cutter mold for a fantasy mmorpg, and shoved post apocalyptic down its neck, and painted neon green shit all over it... and when the paint had dried, they decided to change the name of Plate Armor to Ultra Seasoned Exo Nano Mumbo Jumbo Casing ... The Healing spell became Field Repair... or Remote Screw Driving... or some other completely random and improbable choice of name that only served to confuse the players and drive them away from the game.

SO how did this game play ?

Well basically it felt like a singleplayer fantasy mmorpg game, where you control a car that has a gun on the roof. The car doesnt have proper car physics, in fact it just looks like a car, but it moves very similarly to a person... except it couldnt sidestrafe... at least i dont think it could.. But it could get knocked all over the place whenever it bumped into something!

Now... its been ages since I played it... so naturally some things are going to be quite hazy when it comes to this game (except this one, nagging, memory where i remember the game sucked)

However, I do remember some specific things that really annoyed the crap out of me with this game.

I suppose I should start by explaining that this is a pretty standard cookie cutter mmorpg. It has the standard 4 core classes you expect to see in any mmorpg...

Now I dont remember the names of these 4 classes, well I mean, I dont remember the names that the developers chose to give the classes.

You see, In every other game before Auto Assault, these classes were commonly refered to as:

Tank, Nuker, Rogue, and Healer... or Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Priest

In Auto Assault, the classes were given other names...

For some odd reason?!

it was as if the main goal of the developers was to confuse me as much as humanly possible by renaming EVERY FRIGGIN THING in their stupid universe.

Some games have timesinks where you pay gold to sneeze or take a dump or teleport, or bind your location, or change your gear (Aion comes to mind :p).

Auto Assault had timesinks where you would just didnt know what was going on because of the excellent choice of renaming everything in the game.

Now to make things even more complicated, they decided that it would be a great idea to take this already confusing game, and break its players into 3 factions (I am guessing because they didnt think it would feel singleplayer enough, if other people actually MET eachother while playing Auto Assault. So lets take the already pitiful playerbase and spread it out into 3 groups across the map...)

These 3 groups were called:

Humans, who were obviously humans, with cars.

Mutants, Who were obviously humans... with mutations, but otherwise pretty human'ish, with cars.

Biomeks, who were obviously humans... with robotic addons, but otherwise pretty human'ish, with pogosticks... I wish! :P but no, they had cars too ;)

Sense a pattern here ? :P

Each of these factions would then get their own special names for each of the classes in Auto Assault. Now some of these names were alright, they sorta made sense... and then some of the names were just completely loopy!

Human tank was called the Commando, while the Mutant tank was called the Champion, and the Biomek tank was called the Terminator. These are examples of the semi-sensible name choices...

Here is a typical example of the confusion that would occur while playing the game and encountering some of the NOT SO SENSIBLE NAMES.

Player 1: Watch out!!! There's a Constructor incoming and he has a Master Mind with him! holy crap! an Avenger just popped on me! I need an Engineer!!!

Player 2: uhm.. what? Oh! Right! Yeah, I'm the engineer, let me heal you! One sec while I try to remember what the icon for my heal looks like, because the name doesnt friggin help at all!!! *Sadface*

or another example of how annoying the name changes were for players...

Player 1: Whoah! ... I think... Did you see these Low-Profile Street Tires that just dropped? Look at the awesome Friction Grass stat on it!!!!

Player 2: ehm... is Friction Grass supposed to be high or low ? and when was the last time we rode on grass in this post apocalyptic world of desert and destruction?

Player 3: I'm going to roll on them, cause I dont really know if they are better than my current Flame Retardant Devitalizing Tank Treads of Biting. I guess I'll just have to try them and see!

Player 3 wins the roll and loots.

Player 3: hmm... guess I'll need to go back to town to put this thing on, i forgot that we needed to go to the mechanic to change our gear :/

They changed how the game worked.

They didnt change how the game played.

They didnt do anything useful or interesting.

IT WASNT FUN TO PLAY AT ALL!

So there ya have it... Thats why I quit that game ;)