Auto Assault – First Impressions

There is one aspect that I felt after level 10, that I began to find a little tedious. Some quests you begin in a specific town, may end you up at a completely different town that could be on the other side of the map. This requires you to spend 5 – 10 minutes just driving across the entire plane in order to get to that town. I have been taking the lazy mans method, which allows you to call on your INC to take you there for a small fee. The fee is pretty minimal this early in the game, so I have had no real problems with doing this. It will turn a 5 or 10 minute trip into a 30 second one.

If you have ever played Lineage II, another one of NC Soft’s creations, then the traveling back and forth may not bother you at all if you wish to save the money. In L2, money is far more scarce than in Auto Assault, so you just about force yourself to walk from place to place in that game. So in AA it’s not really too bad. I am unsure what it’s like later on in the game, but when you take the lazy man’s method as I have, you usually earn back 10x that from the quest you are completing, so you are not immediately losing anything.

I have to say that I really like the missions system in the game so far. It’s not tedious at this point, and it helps level you fast.

I have no idea how the developers came up with such a bizarre sounding type of money, but the primary currency is Clink. There are varying degrees of money also, just like in real life. In real life, when you have 100 Pennies, you have 1 Dollar and 0 Pennies. In AA, once you hit 1000 Clink, you will have 1 Scrip worth of cash. I have not earned more than 10 Scrip currently, but I believe once you hit 1000 Scrip, it will become 1 Bar, and 1000 Bars will become 1 Globe. As far as I can tell, Scrip will be the main figure most people will be dealing with. Even at this point, new armor costs at max 2 Scrip, so thinking in terms of Bars will likely only happen with very high levels.. let alone Globes.

Earning Clink is actually pretty easy. You can loot some off mobs, or earn it from the missions you complete. When I hit level 10, I knew the time had come to purchase new armor and weapons. At that time, I only had around 2 Scrip on me, and that was more than enough to completely suit me up with all new equipment. So, I am finding out that the money you earn may very well prove to be enough for all of your goods. You also have the option of purchasing consumables, such as health restorers, but I haven’t bothered due to not really needing them. Just as doing missions is good for your XP though, it’s also just as good for your wallet. So far, earning money is far quicker through missions, as it’s only once in a blue moon I have actually seen any fall off of a mob.

Many people have a hard time not laughing when thinking of AA, simply because a car style MMO doesn’t make any sense. Let’s take a quick look at NC Soft’s track record though. First they released an RTS style MMO called Lineage which, to say took off, would be an understatement. Then came Lineage 2 which continued in the series footsteps. Combined, both games had more players subscribed at one point, to blow away any other MMO on the market. That’s thanks to the Korean players, though. Then came City of Heroes, which was a super hero MMO. At first, even I thought that was a crazy idea, but it turned out to be a winner also.

I can honestly say that, at first, I also thought the idea of an MMO with vehicles was odd, but it has somewhat grown on me. After playing for the first few nights, I quickly realized the potential of the game. Since the year 2000, I have played or beta tested over 50 MMOs, so I have definitely seen my share. Auto Assault is one of the few games that actually grabbed me in and made me want to continue playing. I literally sat down to play one evening for a few hours, and quickly realized that a full 8 hours had past.

Overall, I am impressed with the game so far. As I level up a bit more and learn more about the game, I will publish our final review. Hopefully that will be in a few weeks, so please stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you happen to be on Apocalypse, feel free to add DarkTiesto to your peeps list!

Throughout this article, I have just used NC Soft supplied screen shots. The reason behind this is because they are higher quality than the dithered ones that the game saves for you. If you are interested in checking out a selection of personal screen shots from my first week, check out the next page.