The latest massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) to come from NCSoft is one that puts a twist on the usual game play style that most people have come to expect from RPG’s. You won’t find any warlocks or elves and definitely no caped crusaders flying across the skyline in here. In Auto Assault, you use a car and character in a post-apocalyptic world where three races, Humans, Biomeks and Mutants, are at war with each other and will stop at nothing to see each other obliterated. As you would expect, all three have a long intertwining history and all three loathe each other with a heated passion. It all started at a time in history when a contamination fell from the sky and its effects turned many humans into green skinned mutants.

The humans became afraid and disturbed by the mutants and ended up putting them into camps and segregated them from the rest of civilization. When the mutants rebelled and fought back at the humans, the humans used Biomeks to help fight them. After a while, the humans decided to cleanse the earth of both Biomeks and mutants and went underground to remain safe. Later, after the Humans had the Earth scoured by fire, the humans ventured back to the surface, out of their "Ark" they had lived in, to find that the Biomeks and Mutants still thrived on the barren world and now each of the three races fight against each other for the remains of the world they all believe is theirs.

Once you have decided on which race you would like to play as, you next make a choice of which class you want to be. Each of the three races has different titles for their classes, but they are comparable to each in skills and attributes. The Biomeks have Terminators, Constructors, Masterminds and Agents, where the Mutants have classes in the same respect geared toward religion and the Humans geared towards military aspects. Each class has their own skill level in four areas such as Technology and Perception and each has their own type of vehicle, also with its own traits such size, speed and handling. When you have chosen your race and class, you can then design the appearance of your player and vehicle. Once you have pimped your ride and chosen a name for both, you are ready to roll out into the world.

Depending on which race and class you chose, you will be introduced to your first contacts and will be taught how the intricacies of the controls work from pop up tip windows and dialogue boxes from NPC’s. Each race has basically the same start up, although they will be in different zones with different tasks. You will learn how to target enemies, which actually proves to be a little more difficult then it should have been as well as how to interact with world objects and people. Once you play through the initial tutorial missions, you will be let out into the world and ready for action. If you are a Human, then your missions will involve hunting down enemies and retrieving appropriate materials that you are sent out for, and like wise for Mutants and Biomeks. Most of the missions that were seen were to go out and collect a certain number of items from enemies or salvage from destroying buildings. Once you have completed enough missions and gained enough experience, leveling is done quite easily.

When you level up, the pink circle around the HUD in the lower right corner will be full and you will then have a choice of where you would like to advance yourself. Each time you level, you will be able to add a point into either Faction Skills or Specialty Skills which branch out after you gain more levels. These allow you to upgrade your vehicle by adding additional armor or attacks, such as an MG-Mek for Biomeks, which is essentially a gun on wheels that will follow you around and shoot at anything that moves. Also when you level, you will receive points to build and improve your player character. You have the option of adding the two points to any of your four attributes to help increase your skills in combat, perception, technology and such. Leveling isn’t the only way to upgrade you vehicle however. You will find objects and materials scattered about the world that you can choose to pick up. Loot is found all over the place and quite often. Almost every time you destroy an object or an enemy, you will find something to gather, whether it is useless or not to you, that’s another story. You can sell items at stores or equip them if they are within your level range or keep them for later use. Stores will allow you to upgrade your weapons and armor, as well for certain missions, you will be given vehicle upgrades for completing them.

The world that Auto Assault takes place in is immensely huge to say the least. Each race starts out in a desolate landscape, full of rocks and hills and contamination. There are buildings, wrecks and waste scattered about the land as well as bugs, animals and enemies. Almost every object in the world is destructible, ranging from buildings, fences, rocks, cars and just about anything else you can shake a stick at. Being that the landscape is rocky and full of hills, when you stray from the main roads, there will be times that you will find yourself getting stuck on rocks or odd angles where you can’t get out. Luckily every vehicle has a bounce feature that pops your car into the air a little and allows you to break free from your confine. Being that you are driving a heavily armored vehicle, one would think that you would be able to run over people without batting an eye. Not so it seems. Trying to run over people that are running around on foot just doesn’t seem to work. Having to chase them down and shoot at them just seems odd when you should be able to mow them down instead of watching them bump off your car to the side unhurt.

Around the land there are plenty of small towns strewn about. In each of these towns, you will find your contacts, stores and vehicle repair shops. When your vehicle takes damage from attacks, you can return to a town and drive onto the repair shop pads and easily repair your vehicle in no time at all. You don’t get penalized for having your ride destroyed, as well; it costs nothing to repair and lets you keep playing without much interruption. You also have the option of using the INC, which is a giant airlift that will come and grab you no matter where you are and return you to the closest repair shop. If you are far from town and low on health, calling in these airlifts is a life saver, as well as when you don’t feel like driving back to town to meet a contact, they are equally useful. When you get lonely from driving around all the time by yourself, you can team up with other players by creating or joining a convoy. By clicking a button on the side of the screen, you can inform everyone that you are looking to join a convoy and anyone looking for additional members can easily see that you are available to join up.

The game play of Auto Assault is pretty straight forward and the storyline told from each race, as well as the detailed dialogues from the NPC’s, is more than interesting enough to keep you keen on playing more and more. There were a few glitches found that stopped missions from being completed, but being that it is only the beta that was played, I should be safe to say that all the glitches and bugs will be squashed when it comes time for a full release. For those gamers that are looking for a new MMORPG experience and are fans of car driving games, this is a match as perfect as peanut butter and chocolate. After having a blast playing the beta, Auto Assault looks to be another winner from NCSoft and we’ll be looking forward to it hitting the shelves next month.