Gaming Signal: It's A Road Rage Weekend!

It's A Road Rage Weekend!

Auto Assault is quickly nearing its launch. In anticipation of that, NC Soft is opening the beta this weekend to anyone who wants to participate in a litle road rage. You can get your beta key from Fileplanet. You will have to register if you don't have an account, but it's free!

I'm really going to try and play this one. It looks like Car Wars mixed with an RPG, with rocket launchers. Sweet.

Update: From the Biomek MasterMind class description "Perhaps most dangerous of all, MasterMinds have the ability to create (from scrap) a robot army of various size and composure". A robot army? I'm in.

I, too, was disappointed by AA. It feels like a cross between Car Wars adn City of Heroes, with a little Earth and Beyond thrown in. The combat was certainly fast and frenetic, maybe too much so. Questing isn't anything new and I never really tried the crafting. However, the gameplay itself didn't do much to differentiate itself from anything else and it just seemed to not have the 'fun' factor of WoW. I'll probably be skipping this one and makes me wonder how Tabula Rasa will turn out (although TR is being developed by a different group).

Posted by jp on Sunday February 26, 2006 at 9:46 PM

I will say that I levelled all the way to 5 and saw the city where your avatar was able to run around and customize the car. Combat was crappy in my opinion - stuff was happening way too often outside of my view and well out of my control. Admittedly the game is still beta, but I doubt I will continue playing this one. It just seems too rough around the edges to me, and someways not a very good game...

Posted by Tim on Sunday February 26, 2006 at 10:30 PM

I got a little further - to level 7. It definately felt like a pretty accessible MMO game. I could imagine playing it on a console (like PS3 or 360) as easily as on a PC (except for chat of course.) The action was fast-paced and the grouping we did showed us to be a pretty uber force when we worked together. I wonder if we had done 3 completely different classes if we would have seen even more synergy.

I'm pretty sure my character got a mistake weapon that was well beyond his level - it made the game pretty easy. I was able to do crazy DPS at level 4, much higher than level 10 weapons I saw available later. No wonder I could so easily handle mobs 4 levels higher than me .

I enjoyed the crazy-frenetic combat on the open road. There wasn't enough of it though - there was too much 'go kill these guys' who were standing around in a set location.

I tried the crafting a bit - it seemed kind of disjoint, without the traditional recipes you see in other games. I probably should have tried this out more - it looked like it had potential, especially when you got to the point where you could craft cars and weapons from scratch.

Overall I think it has promise - it might appeal to a crowd that just can't get into the fairy/elves/dwarves fodder we see so often.
I don't think its for me, but I can see it appealing to a younger audience.

Posted by Scott on Monday February 27, 2006 at 12:29 AM