Member Reviews: Review This Game Yourself!

Pros
•  Fast paced combat.
•  Ability to affect your surroundings by blowing nearly everything up.
•  Innovative crafting system.
•  First update helps many areas.
•  Amazing graphics.

Cons
•  Lack of other players.
•  Can get old fast.
•  Lack of true PvP. 
•  Need a better reason to group (convoy).
•  Lacks addictive hook.
•  Resembles a single-player game too much.

The Bottom Line - Valiant attempt at creating a new MMO genre that just misses the mark. 

Link: Official Site

Review

With the nearly countless number of standard fantasy-based MMOs, it would seem that the market is ready for something different. Yes, there are sci-fi themed MMOs, but most use basically the same dynamics as their fantasy counterparts. Auto Assault, however, attempts to change the genre by having a car as your primary avatar instead of a living being. Forget about trying to find that last piece of armor to complete your outfit since Auto Assault is mostly about your steel warhorse. Although EA's Motor City Online failed, Auto Assault puts the action in the extremely small car RPG genre.  

Having a vehicle as your avatar has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are quite obvious as vehicles enable the type of fast and intense combat that can rarely be seen in most other MMOs. Neocron 2 being one of the few examples of this style of combat in a MMO. Most other MMOs use click-based combat where you just click on certain abilities and then wait for them to be executed. The combat in Auto Assault throws that system out the window. It can take minutes of circling around to kill one enemy, but its you doing the action not some system that is in place. 

The downside of having a vehicle as your avatar in an MMO is that it hurts the social aspects of the game. As much as players complain about combat not being exciting enough, too much intense action on a constant basis makes it harder for players to interact. Trying to steer around the game and type at the same time is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Thus, voice chat is more important here than it would be in other MMORPGs. The lack of a real reason to group with other players also hurts the social aspect of the game.

Sadly, the biggest problem with this game by far is the lack of people playing it. This problem is compounded by the fact that the game has multiple servers. If there are not that many people playing the game even during peak hours, it would make sense to just have one server and mix the PvP and PvE elements. Although the genre is filled with games that have dragons and swords and Auto Assault offers very intense play without dragons or swords, it does not seem to be enough to attract the mainstream MMORPGer. With more people and updates that improve grouping and PvP, Auto Assault has a chance at being a major niche player in the genre. Only time will tell, however, how long the game can hold out with low populations.  

Game Ogre's Rating (out of 10): 

7.50

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