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Hondas with Heat-Seekers
MMORPGDot doesn't dispute Auto Assault lives up to its mantra: "The Fastest, Most Destructive MMO Ever," but they do ponder whether or not it has the wheels to keep gamers playing month after month. I tend to think that as long as there's a southern California commute, there will be a market for vehicular destruction MMOs.

"Overall the game delivers what it promises: long hours of blowing-up-crap bliss. The question is what sort of gamer will it appeal to? Will the action-craving gamer pay a monthly fee for what feels like a late nineties post-apocalyptic arcade with character advancement, crafting and multiplayer options thrown in? Will the MMORPG player identify enough with a little vehicle zooming around the screen as his character to want to put time, money and effort into developing the vehicle slash quasi-character? Will those good old Car Wars fans find what they are looking for in this aspiring MMOG version of the golden oldie?
I doubt that all those sceptical of an integration of MMORPG with a fast paced action car warring post apocalyptic game will have their scepticism dispelled by Auto Assault. On the fun, blowing-things-up side of things the game works well enough, but on a lot of other fronts - at least in its current Beta stage - the overall concept and what the game does with it are both problematic. It simply seems difficult for the game to succeed on all the fronts it wishes to succeed, both because of the overall conceptual structure of the game and the way the various elements of that structure have been married. But I will definitely give the release version a spin to see if these doubts have been eased by the final product. "

Read more of the Auto Assault preview at MMORPGDot, if you so desire.
Other links you might enjoy:

• The TTH Auto Assault Community Site - All the "blowing-up-crap bliss" you need, outside of beta.
• Possibly the Coolest Car Commercial Ever Made - From Honda. And if you live in North America, you've probably never seen it.
• Past Auto Assault News.

Pintos with Panzerschreken
For once we'd like to see an Auto Assault preview where the writer didn't get in the newbie-mobile, skip the introductory quests, comment on the devestation all around (which you can glibly add to be destroying landscape objects) and finally relay the joy of blowing things up (well, okay, you can never say enough about blowing things up! Vin Diesel agrees.) Unfortunately, Stratics follows the unwritten formula for AA previews.... doesn't anyone do anything fun and new in this post-apocalyptic world- stop for gas and donuts perhaps?

" Upon first entering the game world as a Biomek Terminator (with a giant cannon for a left arm, it doesn’t do much but it sure looks cool) I noticed how bleak it all seemed. Ever play Fallout and notice all the devastation? Same principle. I didn’t waste much time in the starter city getting any of the dozen or so missions readily available for rewards of experience and cash, I jumped straight into my car and was out there blasting things. In the original newbie car – I use car as a superlative, it’s really more of a rolling death machine with a giant gun on the top – you’re already able to get up to a handy seventy something miles per hour, chaingun firing away with reckless abandon at anything that moves or doesn’t move. One of the first handy things I noticed is that as I destroyed the beautifully crafted landscape the destroyed objects would release other objects to me which I could pick up. Bits of scrap metal, grease, nuts&bolts, general junk really. Little did I know at the time that each and every one of those items that I got from just gleefully destroying the world would allow me to craft my own items with ease when I returned to the city."

Read more of the Stratics preview of Auto Assault at Stratics Central, that is, if you haven't read it all before.
Other links you might enjoy:

• "What is Auto Assault?" - FAQ at the official site
• The Auto Assault community site at Ten Ton Hammer
• FordPinto.com - The fansite for Ford Pinto enthusiasts, no joke!
• Panzerschreken? - It is a fun word, but no, I didn't make it up!

Mazdas With Mortars.
GameSpot has posted an Auto Assault preview focusing on the Driver-versus-Driver aspect of the upcoming NetDevil game. Robby Gordon let loose with copious quantities of verbal abuse when we asked about the article, though NASCAR had this statement in his defense:

" Auto Assault promises to be the fastest online role-playing game on the planet when it launches later this year. After all, what other online RPG lets you put the pedal to the metal as you hurtle along a postapocalyptic wasteland, blasting other cars, not to mention mutated creatures? Of course, part of the charm of online role-playing games is that you can graduate from beating up on the computer to challenging your fellow human players in a test of skill, as well as low ping rates. Every online role-playing game approaches player-versus-player gameplay in its own way, and Auto Assault is no different. We'll let the NetDevil staff explain. "

You can read the entire Auto Assault Preview at GameSpot.
Related Links:

• #1 Auto Assault Community on the Internet.
• NASCAR

Camaros with Cannons!
The Official Auto Assault site has updated the recon section with a second look at loot. Brad Pitt denied that his latest movie was a bomb, citing the following:

"Traders have often
remarked about the sheer variety of items and useful pieces
of equipment found in the Central Wastelands, whether from
the ruins of an ancient pre-apocalyptic city, deep in the
stomach of a particularly nasty Crawler, or strewn from
the wreckage of a Pike Duster. In fact, the wide assortment
of resources, weapons, components, and other materials available
for exploitation in the Central Wastelands theoretically
approaches infinity. A Loot research study funded by Sledge's
Stop ‘n Shop in Scrap Valley estimates that there are billions of unique objects in the Central Wastelands alone. Although most items are quite common – it is not unknown to come across an extremely rare, valuable find. "

You can read the entire Auto Assault Recon Update at The Official Site.
Other Links You Might Enjoy:

• Auto Assault Community at TenTonHammer.com
• Other Auto Assault News

BMWs with Bazookas!

Gamecloud's latest preview gives readers a look inside the Auto Assault beta. So a biomek, a mutant, and a lawyer walk into a bar, and the barkeeper says...

After the tutorial missions are over it was time to actually go into the game with real people online. Currently the beta only allows people to play a few hours a couple of times a week. Your avatar is directed to talk to NPCs who give your character missions to execute. You then move your avatar out of the base and then a loading screen comes up where you see your vehicle. The missions in the first few levels are pretty basic. You have to go and shoot a pre-determined number of specific enemies, whether they are human, mutant creatures or other vehicles. The game's combat is real time but there are some winks to normal MMORPGs combat as the game calculates hits and misses.

Stave your preview hunger (we know you can't get enough of these!) by reading the rest of the Gamecloud Auto Assault beta sneak peek!

A busy day in Auto Assault...

NetDevil's newest "prologue" feature on the Auto Assault site comes in the from of an fragmented event log from "Day 189."

I appreciate the art involved, but these logs gives me a headache. Parsing through these things brings back bad memories of long nights in Tijuana involving lots of tequila, nightmarish fletching sessions in EQLive, an female NPC named Aryclauwynn, and... well, you know too much already!

02.28.22 Disturbance reported at Enhancement Facility 5.
02.42.41 Second disturbance reported at Enhancement Facility 5 (Designated: PEC5). Camp Security Terminator Detachment A/11/51 to investigate.
02.43.10 Mastermind Agrellex Minor posits that if the disturbance is similar to disturbances on 188.02.55.10, 187.01.23.09 and 186.01.45.21 this would account for normal Pike behavior.
02.43.15 CSTD cautioned.
02.43.55 Consensus taken by Agrellex, Cantor, and Optimus order use of force to stop disruptive Pike behavior in PEC5.

08.00.85 Viewer visits the Auto Assault "Recon: Chapter 7" page.
08.00.86 Ethec moves on to the next news piece.

Yugos with Flamethrowers

Gamer girl entertainment mag KillerBetties.com previews Auto Assault, the sci-fi action MMO with a vehicular destruction flair. No mention is made anywhere about what made these Betties resort to violence in the first place.

I also learned that it's possible (not to mention fun!) to plunge headfirst off a cliff without sustaining damage (or, at least, I didn't take any damage). My car landed upside-down, but righted itself after a second or so. While the car was cumbersome to maneuver at first, once I got the hang of it I could do nifty little tricks like 360's and sliding stops. It's rather fun to come skidding up to an NPC sideways. It would be even more fun if the NPCs reacted by jumping back in alarm or scolding drivers for their antics, but alas, they just stand there.

Take a look at the newest Auto Assault preview, and get some bonus new screenshots with your click.

Gamer Girlies Walk Us Through Their AA Experience
For a bare-bones, no-acronym approach to what AA is all about, check out Game-Vixens AA preview (**Sort-of Pseudo Disclaimer: Ethec by no means wishes to say that girls can't use acronyms or write complex reviews, and he wishes to thank Game-Vixen for writing a review for simpletons like him... aaagh don't hurt me, please! ::curls into a ball::)

"Auto Assault is set in a futuristic world contaminated by radiation released when humans attempted to wipe the surface clean in order to rid themselves of alien invaders. Only after resurfacing from hundreds of years living underground did they realize what a mistake they had made. This radiation created mutated forms of all life including a portion of humanity who are now called mutants. There were other humans who adapted to this contamination by fusing nano technology and flesh together; these humanoids are known as biomeks."

More from the Auto Assault preview at Game-vixens.com!

Mustangs with Munitions
Gamerati has an Auto Assault preview posted based on their play at QuakeCon. Bruce Campbell showed them his "Boomstick!" and yelled this:

"While we were at QuakeCon 2005 last weekend, I was able to get some
quality time in with a non-restricted and unsupervised copy of Auto Assault from NCSoft and NetDevil. While I wasn't able to spend enough time to cover every class, I did get quite a bit of detail on the Human Lieutenant in addition to some general class/race info, and a small vid in addition to a whole mess of screenshots. "

You can read the Auto Assault Preview at Gamerati.

Suzukis With Shotguns
GameSpot has posted an Auto Assault preview focusing on what makes it different from the glut of MMOGs on the market now. Jessica Simpson, wearing her Daisy Duke outfit and an ear-to-ear grin giggled and then giggled again before saying:

" Swords and sorcery are part and parcel of the majority of online role-playing games on the market. However, this is not the case with Auto Assault, the upcoming online role-playing game from NCsoft and developer NetDevil. Instead of dealing with grumpy dwarves, haughty elves, and cheeky peasants, Auto Assault is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where three different races battle it out for supremacy, not with swords, but with highly customized combat vehicles. We've played around with the beta test of Auto Assault, and discovered that it's part Road Warrior, part Twisted Metal: Black, and all online RPG. "

You can read the entire Auto Assault Preview at GameSpot.
More Auto Assault Previews, Screenshots and Information than any other site: AutoAssault.TenTonHammer.com

Austin Minis with Assault Rifles.
RPGVault has posted a preview of Auto Assault featuring arena combat. Bruce Campbell has never starred in an Auto Assault movie, nor has he likely ever said:

"In the latest segment of our edifying series, we find out about the arena combat element in NetDevil's online world. "

You can read the entire Auto Assault Interview at RPGVault.
If you visit only one Auto Assault site today, make it AutoAssault.TenTonHammer.com.

Transmissions from the central wastelands. It's a car game, transmissions, get it?
NCSoft has posted Volume Two of their Auto Assault Transmissions from the wasteland. Britney Spears was eating a greasy burger so we couldn't understand what she said, but it might have been this:

" Every week in the month of August we'll be presenting a new volume in the Transmissions from the Central Wastelands, a compendium of stories, screen shots, and other goodies from the wonderful Auto Assault beta test corps. This sizeable entry was completely contributed by bean23. "

You can read the entire Auto Assault Tranmissions from the Wasteland at The Official Site.
You can read pages and pages and more pages of Auto Assault information at AutoAssault.TenTonHammer.com.

The little known NKGN (North Korea Goes Nuclear) factor in modern MMOG development...

What's it like to enter the big-time MMOG industry as a small independent developer? How will a vehicle-based futuristic game fair in a genre primarily geared to the wonts of fantasy fans? Will Kim Jong Il influence AA's development? How many cuss words will a dev have to have visi-bleeped in a formal interview?

Answers to these burning questions and more in a candid interview with Design Director Ryan Seabury at UK's Prodigious Gaming website:

Pro-G: Was there ever a point where you felt you had undertaken a job that was slightly beyond you?

Ryan: NetDevil has a pretty can-do attitude - obvious by the hours that we work. We bend over backwards to do what we say we're going to do. There's always uncertainty as an independent developer. Until you have a consistent revenue stream coming in from some hit game, or at least a couple of OK games, it's pretty scary, because all of our money is coming in from one publisher at this point. JumpGate is still active but it's not by any means a commercial success.

North Korea could just blow the sh*t out of Seoul someday which would destabilise NCsoft because they're a Korean company. We think about those things. We have to. That would destroy their cash flow and then our project's gone all of a sudden. Those are the kinds of things that have to enter your mind as part of the cognitive process for an independent developer.

I don't know if there's ever been any 'oh sh*t' moments. There's never been a point when we were like, 'man this sucks, like what have we been doing?'

Ryan recounts more indy-dev highs and lows here!