That Rev Chap

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Homepage: http://www.inverty.com


Posts by That Rev Chap

Auto Assault Beta

Well, the performance issues haven’t gone away overnight, but the repair pads work now.

I went back to the Proving Grounds to mop up quests that I’d missed. Did a few and then tried my first PvP mission. Well, sort of PvP. I wasn’t shooting other humans, but racing them. First up to the top of a mountain won the race… or wouldn’t have done if the end point hadn’t refused to respond when I got there. I should have won, but in the end I had to just abandon the quest. Gah. I filed a bug report about that one, you can be sure of that.

Then I did another mission where you were meant to kill enemies round a house, but they weren’t unique, so you could kill the same type of enemy elesewhere on the map and complete the mission in relative safety. Not sure if that’s a real bug or just an odd consequence of the design, so I didn’t file a report about that one.

Did a few more missions until I just couldn’t take another. I’m running out of missions, too. I’m getting tons of equipment I can’t use for another four or five levels and after the mission I just took I’m not sure if there are any more I’m ready for. The “main” mission I’ve got is for level eleven players and I’m only level four.

I suppose I should say something else nice. Well, I like the way that though all your weapons are ranged you can do melee damage by driving into enemies. You are in a big armoured car, after all.

Auto Assault Beta

Well, I’ve played it some more.

It hasn’t changed much, except that I’ve run into some horrible framerate issues. Really, really bad stuff. Very odd. It first happened when I went into the first town and I could hardly move around because I was getting about one screen update per second. And then back out in the field I had some issues – mainly when driving a long way very quickly. I think the game just can’t keep up with the amount of streaming it must be doing. Or something.

Also, the repair pads don’t seem to be working, which meant a lot of down time until I discovered I could get fully healed for two, er, whatever the currency they use is called.

All the quests are very standard “kill N of X” or “deliver O to Y” things. And I’ve done the main line of quests too quickly and am now on one where the enemies I’m meant to kill are impossible for me to hit. (I thought something was up when I got a quest reward that was two levels too high for me.) So I’m going back to find some subquests more suited to my level.

Something odd happened, though. I enjoyed myself. I killed a load of enemies. I had a very quick conversation with another player. I customised my car a bit. I used some skill points to get some healing and defensive abilities. I even got an apartment. And despite the lazy post-apocalyptic generic look of it, despite the frame rate issues, despite the non-working repair pads and despite the standard MMO combat I had a very good time.

I can’t explain it and I find it slightly worrying, because I feel like I should be slagging it off as lazy, uninspired rubbish. But I can’t help it. I enjoyed it.

Auto Assault Beta

Well, first impressions after ninety minutes of play. It’s very… brown.

And it just feels like GENERO-MMO-293.94… but in a car! It looks like the combat should be proper Twisted Metal style shooting, but it’s really just normal MMO style ranged fighting with a cosmetic twist. Lock on to target and hold down fire, watching it say -4, MISS, -2, MISS above your target until one of you dies. And occasionally pressing a number key to use a special ability if you’re still awake.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy… It’s just I didn’t… er… really… feel much of anything. It’s not bad, but based on that quick play (I’ll try more later) it’s something I might drop fifteen quid on, but not something I’d pay a monthly fee for. Maybe there’s more to it later…