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Auto Assault is a massively multiplayer online game, developed by NetDevil and published by NCsoft. It combines vehicular combat with role-playing elements, allowing the player to explore a post-apocalyptic future in customizable cars, motorcycles, semis, and tanks.
The player may choose one of three factions — Humans, Mutants, and Biomeks — and a class to determine the type of character he will play. The majority of the gameplay takes place in the vehicle, but the player leaves the vehicle when entering cities.
Gameplay
Auto Assault is centered on the theme of an alien microbe that infests the Earth during a massive meteor shower around Christmas, 2030. Some children born after the event begin to show signs of mutation, causing a rift which eventually leads to a conflict between the Humans and the Mutants. The Humans employ a mechanical police force called the TemperNet Police System, a military grade AI authorized to handle the the Mutant uprising worldwide. In addition to the TemperNet, the humans also develope a cybernetic military taskforce called the Biomeks, to act as human counterparts to the TemperNet forces, able to act in concert with them due to their ability to link their nervous systems with TemperNet networks, but also to provide a human perspective to TemperNet's activities, and to ensure TemperNet remained firmly under the human yoke. As the global Infection worsened, however, the Biomek and TemperNet forces were pushed towards increasingly extreme measures, many of which were not condoned by the human overlords. Eventually, the humans saw that these efforts were doomed to fail in the long run, and so they implemented the Final Solution, - a combined arms NBC scorched earth policy - retreating under the surface of the earth, and attempting to eliminate the Mutants, Biomeks and TemperNet forces on the surface with the intention of re-surfacing years later after the devastation had subsided and reclaiming the globe for humankind, and not for some alien parasites or human technologies allowed to be taken too far.
The game takes place in the 29th century, after the apocalyptic battle that left the earth in ruins. The survivors of the Humans have emerged from hiding, only to find that their plan has failed dramatically. Mutants, and Biomeks, are both still existent and fighting each other, and TemperNet has broken off contact entirely, believing that now is the time for machines to inherit the earth from biological life forms, including the Biomeks (who it considers to be a pollution of pure technological perfectability). These many factions are left to battle for the fate of the new world in a harsh post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Factions
The three playable factions each have distinct racial advantages and are separated into four classes unique to each faction.
| Tank | Healer | Pet Master | Stealth | |
| Human | Commando | Engineer | Lieutenant | Bounty Hunter |
| Mutant | Champion | Shaman | Archon | Avenger |
| Biomek | Terminator | Constructor | Master Mind | Agent |
Humans
Descendants of modern humans are meticulous in fending off mutation. Through the use of genetic engineering and subverted alien technology, they have staved off contamination while enhancing their strength, eyesight, agility, and mental powers. They view Mutants and Biomeks as vile and seek to eliminate them.
- Racial Advantages
- Shield Technology - all vehicles and personnel enhance their hit points through the equipping of shields.
- Holographic Technology - many skills are based on projection of holographic images.
- Energy & Magnetics Knowledge - Humans have an advantage over other factions when wielding weapons or other items where energy and/or magnetism is the primary feature.
- Shield Inversion - through shield inversion, Human players can devastate enemies.
- Offensive Specialty - Energy
- Defensive Specialty - Energy
- Classes
- Commando - The tank class of the Human faction uses a heavily armored vehicle with powerful weapons and armor.
- Engineer - A class of mechanics who can fix and enhance vehicles, they use beam generators in their attacks.
- Lieutenant - Psychically aware Lieutenants are able to stimulate allies and harm enemies. They can summon several forms of support, including air and ground support.
- Bounty Hunter - Stealthy and dangerous, Bounty Hunters work as assassins or scouts as well as battlefield support.
Mutants
Mutants are those descended from the first people affected by the alien contamination. They see their mutation as divine intervention, and revere the change with religious reverence. They consider Humans to be inherently evil and hold Biomeks in utter contempt for their past oppression of the Mutants.
- Racial Advantages
- Natural Regeneration - through the infusion of contaminated materials in their vehicles, Mutants have developed a regenerative capability that allows their vehicles to automatically repair damage.
- Contamination Friendly - Mutants use the contaminated atmosphere to gain supernatural powers.
- Wraithphase - A wraith-like presence during hazard mode.
- Offensive Specialty - Contamination
- Defensive Specialty - Contamination
- Classes
- Champion - Tough warriors with hardened armor and powerful weapons, Champions fight on the front lines of any Mutant battle.
- Shaman - A class of spiritual warriors who have a particular talent for healing and defense.
- Archon - Archons manipulate the environment, calling forth phaseformed creatures for support and using the environment against enemies.
- Avenger - With the ability to call swarms of insects to do their bidding, Avengers may disable opponents or assist allies while blending into the background.
Biomeks
Biomeks are biological beings who have utilized technology to enhance their abilities, including cybernetic prosthetic body parts. They hate Humans for their betrayal during the apocalyptic strike and see Mutants as dangerous religious fanatics.
- Racial Advantages
- Environmentally Oblivious - Biomeks do not revel in the contamination like Mutants, but they have a natural resistance to it and do not consider it the threat that Humans do.
- Tough - Biomek vehicles are tougher and have more hit points than those of the other races.
- Synchronized - in groups, Biomeks can utilize chain or network attacks that affect multiple members of the convoy.
- Hazard Meks - in harzard mode, the Biomek vehicle becomes a hulking Mek.
- Offensive Specialties - Corrosives and Fire
- Defensive Specialty - Versatile
- Classes
- Terminator - Strong, tough and fearless, the Terminator is the main assault class of the Biomeks.
- Constructor - Scavengers who utilies the Biomek nanotechnology to create new items and repair other Biomek vehicles.
- MasterMind - With the ability to summon an army from the rubble and scrap left behind, MasterMinds are formidable opponents.
- Agent - Utilizing stealth and recon drones, Agents make good inflitrators and are excellent scouts.
Lore
In 2030, alien craft drop strange terraforming pods onto Earth's surface. They spread strange contaminations across the world. Although the elite learn to harness the strange forces associated with these pods, those less fortunate are left to suffer exposure to the contaminations released by them. Many die from the strange mutations that result... but a few are altered, changed. They gain strange new powers, green skin and glowing eyes. The children of the previous generation begin to be born with these mutations. Some view these as gifts from some higher power.
However, a vast majority, including the world governments, think this is some kind of plague and that the mutants are to be cured, or failing that, controlled. The mutant population continues to expand as they are herded into internment camps. Soon entire cities are quarantined as those who have escaped the mutations flee to safer areas. The government establishes an artificialy intelligent computer called TemperNet, designed to keep watch over the mutant populace, even as the military battles the omnipresent rioting.
Soon, a stronghold for the mutants arises, called the Citadel, and forth from the Citadel comes The Voice, a unifying persona that speaks for the mutants and says that they must rise up and overthrow the unchanged. Open war between those who have changed and those who have not breaks out. In an effort to combat the seemingly unstoppable united mutant force, the governments of the world (now united under the guise of a powerful international corporation called Hestia) create the biomechanical raiders, soldiers who have had their limbs replaced by cybernetic ones and have received mental and physical enhencements.
At first the Biomeks, as they come to be called, experience great success against the mutant forces. Their immunity to the contaminiation and their existing military skill combined with their enhencements proves a match for the stalwart mutants and their strange powers. However, the relatively small numbers of the Biomeks are unable to defeat the vastly superior numbers of the mutants.
In desperation, the Hestia corporation intiate a total purge program. Humanity's elite, the scientists, philosphers, craftsmen and so forth are to go underground in a number of massive Arks, while the planet's surface would be totally cleansed by a barrage of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warheads. However, the elite who were going underground represented a very small percentage of humanity. The mutants, other peoples, and even the biomeks were left on the surface to be obliterated by the cleansing, or the "Night that was Day" as it was called by the mutants.
The humans live underground for a period of nearly eight hundred years, continuing to advance their harnessed alien technology, developing powerful energy shielding, among other advancements. All the while, they never know that the cleansing almost totally failed. On the surface, small numbers of mutants, biomeks, as well as groups of scavengers and gangs, and even mutated forms of plant and animal life; grew and thrived on the remains of the old world.
Eventually, the Hestia board voted for re-emergence, thinking they would find an empty world to reshape as they saw fit. What they found was entirely unexpected- a strange new world that was teeming with life. Though much of the surface was irradiated and uninhabitable, a sizeable region around Ark I was, as the Hestia board saw it, "salvageable". However, it would require either assimilation or elimination of all other people on the surface. The humans were chagrined to discover that their mortal enemies, the mutants, had survived the cleansing, as well as the biomeks, who were none too happy about being abandoned and left to die.
Thus, open war broke out between the three factions and the entire remaining world was almost wiped out. The three sides, depleted and exhausted, soon establish an uneasy truce under the auspices of a mysterious trade organization called International Negotibles Consulting, or INC for short. INC agreed to provide transportation and repairs to the vehicular operatives of the three factions.
Conflict between the three is reduced to small scale battles involving armored cars, trucks, motorcycles, semis and even tanks, armed to the teeth with advanced weaponry. This is where the player's experience begins.
Player experience
Auto Assault takes place in two settings; the cities and the outside world. The city is experienced by moving the player's customized character around, interacting with NPCs, other players, and environmental objects. Upgrades and vehicles can be bought here. When the player chooses to exit the city he/she is in, they are taken to the outside world, where they traverse the terrain in heavily armed vehicles. Combat is reminiscent of a first person shooter game, with movement, aiming and firing being done in real time with the keyboard and mouse. There are also character skills, which activate special abilities.
External links
"Auto Assault"