Gamespots review / AA reviews in general

dr_przekora · April 2006

Here we are with a Gamespot's review of AA:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/autoassault/review.html?sid=6148520

Do you find it accurate? I don't. Looking forward to hearing from you. Let the discussion roll...

Maybe we could make this topic the all-review discussion one?

MMORPGtester · April 2006

As far as the mechanics of the game work, they have it correct. And with no death penalty it does take the nerv crunching fear out from attacking mobs.

A way to correct this and still let people feel free to explor when not leveling would be create a timmer hold your weapon down for a period of secconds and shoot off a attacking special and you get flaged "leveling" If you die when this mode is in effect your artibutes take a hit for a set time and a little money is gone for the INC ride.

And what makes a game top notch in my oppinion is the community. If it has a strong community there is no getting it down. More people is what AA needs, It should be upto netdevel to do this, but for the mean time tell your friends. and hey.. make winamp skins and submit it to winamp. how many people use thoes thing?

Clever_Glove · April 2006

Originally posted by MMORPGtester

As far as the mechanics of the game work, they have it correct. And with no death penalty it does take the nerv crunching fear out from attacking mobs.

This is actually a false statement, there is a penalty when you "die", you lose time. Your taken form where you where to a repair station (witch could be on the other side of the zone), you have low hp/power so you have to sit on the pad to recover, then drive back to where you where.

IMHO it's all the penalty a MMO, completing tasks should be hard, not grinding. It's bad enough as it is, it doesn't need to made more painful.

It's been proven by every game that death penalties don't keep the dumb from making max level. It only harms people that wish to risks, so the normal player doesn't. They sit in the same spot killing the same mob over and over. It's not fun or good for the game.

/2 cents off

Frubb · April 2006

I agree with much of the above review, and its common for Gamespot to be quite tight with their marking.

The graphics deserve better than a 6 though...I find that a little unfair considering how much is going on-screen at any particular moment. I can't see how they are able to score WoW's graphics higher, when realisticly, the artwork in both games is compariable in quality (ie: very good).

The game does have its flaws though, its just that I love the game as it is, and can overlook its blemishes as a just-released title.

EVE faired much worse when Gamespot released their review of it in 2004 ; which is similar beacuse of its niche, vehicular pvp focus (I love EVE also, and really admire the devs for what their game has become).

AA just needs more reason to exp, a healthier population and an extra layer of polish (the game suffers from memory leaks in particular zones) such as an more intuiative UI. All the problems are fixable, unless you have an inherant distaste for casual, mission-based gameplay.

Danjak · April 2006

Overall, a pretty fair review. Except for the items pointed to below, I agree with him on most points.

The game *does* need more polish, for sure. It reminds me a lot of City of Heroes at its launch: a bare bones game that focuses on getting right what makes it great, and promises to patch the rest in later. What makes Auto Assault great is its fast pace and stellar combat... and it nailed both of those. Hopefully we'll see more things to add flavor added in later.

Couple of things I wanted to mention specifically:

1) The reviewer says the game is "addictive." I wholeheartedly agree.

2) He found the missions to be repetitive. IMO, almost all MMORPG missions are repetitive. All WoW missions boil down to deliver, collect, or kill. Same here. I happen to find the missions much better written here, however.

3) I have played for hours on end and never experienced the memory leaks he's referring to. My framerates have always remained very high.

4) The population is on the low side - BUT, more are coming in each day. He says the low population makes him think it would have worked better in the Guild Wars model - I disagree. This game right now is exactly like DAoC, and no one ever said that would work better as Guild Wars. The only difference between this game and DAoC is that DAoC has more players. Hopefully, AA will get more soon too with a new advertising campaign and word-of-mouth. I played last night (a Thurs.) and saw people everywhere - I actually spent the whole night chatting instead of playing and had a great time.

5) Yes, we can use more character creation options and more trim features to differentiate our cars. That said, I've *never* seen either another character or another car that looked like mine. I don't see how he can say all of us look alike - that's simply inaccurate.

Clever_Glove · April 2006

Originally posted by Danjak

Overall, a pretty fair review. Except for the items pointed to below, I agree with him on most points.
The game *does* need more polish, for sure. It reminds me a lot of City of Heroes at its launch: a bare bones game that focuses on getting right what makes it great, and promises to patch the rest in later. What makes Auto Assault great is its fast pace and stellar combat... and it nailed both of those. Hopefully we'll see more things to add flavor added in later.
Couple of things I wanted to mention specifically:
1) The reviewer says the game is "addictive." I wholeheartedly agree.
2) He found the missions to be repetitive. IMO, almost all MMORPG missions are repetitive. All WoW missions boil down to deliver, collect, or kill. Same here. I happen to find the missions much better written here, however.
3) I have played for hours on end and never experienced the memory leaks he's referring to. My framerates have always remained very high.
4) The population is on the low side - BUT, more are coming in each day. He says the low population makes him think it would have worked better in the Guild Wars model - I disagree. This game right now is exactly like DAoC, and no one ever said that would work better as Guild Wars. The only difference between this game and DAoC is that DAoC has more players. Hopefully, AA will get more soon too with a new advertising campaign and word-of-mouth. I played last night (a Thurs.) and saw people everywhere - I actually spent the whole night chatting instead of playing and had a great time.
5) Yes, we can use more character creation options and more trim features to differentiate our cars. That said, I've *never* seen either another character or another car that looked like mine. I don't see how he can say all of us look alike - that's simply inaccurate.

2.) Don't forget the escort mission types. There are only so many things to send you to do... and I think AA does a good of mixing them up a bit.

3.) I thought he was suggesting server memory leaks? I've never had any problems with the client at all, and I play on a craptasic 3 year old machine. Games play far better than I expected.

4.) Why is low population a bad thing? It means you'll get less lag, delays and harassment. But I am starting to see people in every town I go to, and I cross people from going from A to B. The game started on Easter weekend. I'm not surprised it had a low initial turn out. That and people like me have burned many times by buggy, faulty and just plane broken game launches. I don't blame anyone for letting brew a couple weeks to let the critical issues sort out. (although AA had none to my knowledge)

Everyday more people play. Slow growth is lasting growth.

5.) I drive a trash truck. I have yet to see another player in my model at all, much less with the same color or customisations.

Frubb · April 2006

Some people ARE unfortunately suffering from memory leaks, such as myself. It seems to appear in certain zones, rather than situations. Once I've zoned into Upside, for example, and back out again, things return to normal. I'm also playing with sufficient amount of ram (1.5 gig)

dr_przekora · April 2006

I like
reading reviews, respect gamespot for their service, but I think their reviewer, like
the others missed something. I agree that quests come to "go 'n kill"
mostly, but it appears clearly in the quest logs that the devs did a great job
to make the killing justified. Reviewers tend to forget that when you get a
quest there's very often a real, convincing story behind it. Quest givers in AA
do their research, need a recon misssions - that is obvious. But what about
these AA examples:

1) one
guy want's you to kill some creatures or Pikes, but he wants to you to do it
instead of him - he's a carrer-oriented person and gives you a distracting talk
just to convince you. More: when the chief of outpost hears about this you have the pleasure to get the smile carrer-man 's face. Tkat's a involving story.
2) quest about murders of three fellow mutants - you are send to investigate and gather evidence(via killing of course) . There's a chain of quests concerning the murder. In the end you are send to deliver the evidence to tocado, but the last quest's giver adds: one of the mutants killed was my family. That's why I want you to kill 20 pikes on the road. Thanks to good storytelling I willingly became an angel of vengance. Never happened in WoW.
3) There's a outpost run by machines of in-game company INC. They want you to kill (again) but the way they give you quests is just great part of a story and sense of humour. It went like that: the Pike are problem to our business - tells the machine - but we estimated that there is 60 precent probability that they will change their attitude towards us if we reduce their population by 30 percent. Give me an MMORPG like that!

There's more, but I won't waste your time. Never agree the low-quality-repetetive-quests-in-AA sentences! However there are some UI issues like no pop-up information in the quick-bar or the chaos in the inventory, but these are really minor and to be polished. The rest is just very good to me.

The game has some unpalpable original flavour maybe a buff can only see. But how many buffs are there among the review nation, that's a question.

IceyGregorio · April 2006

Eariler today I posted a review(I go by FrostyGoat there, dunno why lol) saying why Jeff Gerstmann is in short a fat retarded man that needs to move out of mothers basement playing D&D and role playing as a fairy. No wait he is a fairy in real life

lol. Well I said why he was a idiot not all that stuff though. Put ya check it out, and you should recommend it too. Its actually based on experince with the game, instead of Jeff who said on that show The Last Word? last week hes only tried Humans. Its evident he hasnt done much of anything if anything to begin with, on the other two factions. Most people would agree with me that Humans are the newbie guys that aren't nearly as fun as Meks or Mutys too.

neuronomad · April 2006

First off hats off again to NcSoft and NetDevil. Auto Assault rocks. I didn't play during Beta, and my first thought was that this game would be lame. Well I was way off base. It is fun and I plan on spending much time in the future with it.

I have played WoW, EQ2, Silkroad, GW, COH/COV, etc.... and by far this seems to be the most stable at release.

I recently left WoW because of the unstable servers and the fact it was more QueueCraft than anything else, and I am so glad I left WoW because it opened my time up to play AA.

dr_przekora · April 2006

Originally posted by IceyGregorio
Eariler today I posted a review(I go by FrostyGoat there, dunno why lol) saying why Jeff Gerstmann is in short a fat retarded man that needs to move out of mothers basement playing D&D and role playing as a fairy. No wait he is a fairy in real life lol. Well I said why he was a idiot not all that stuff though. Put ya check it out, and you should recommend it too. Its actually based on experince with the game, instead of Jeff who said on that show The Last Word? last week hes only tried Humans. Its evident he hasnt done much of anything if anything to begin with, on the other two factions. Most people would agree with me that Humans are the newbie guys that aren't nearly as fun as Meks or Mutys too.

Come on mate. Don't expose your personal and not worth mentioning thoughts on Jeff Gerstmann. When you talk the AA you are more passable. Fat retarded man, c'mon - it's 21 century(23 in game)!

And now...

Can anybody explain the massive 1 point drop of all mmorpgs in the ranking and GW: Factions 9,1 score? I'm a bit new to mmorpg.com, but I clearly see that something crazy is happening with the rankings. Are the GW: Factions fans responsible by editing and lowering their reviews of other games? And to get them kicked I've got to edit my review of AA and give it 10s, and to FActions average 5,2? Didn't know such absurd is going round here...

Snivius · April 2006

Originally posted by Danjak

Overall, a pretty fair review. Except for the items pointed to below, I agree with him on most points.
The game *does* need more polish, for sure. It reminds me a lot of City of Heroes at its launch: a bare bones game that focuses on getting right what makes it great, and promises to patch the rest in later. What makes Auto Assault great is its fast pace and stellar combat... and it nailed both of those. Hopefully we'll see more things to add flavor added in later.
Couple of things I wanted to mention specifically:
1) The reviewer says the game is "addictive." I wholeheartedly agree.
2) He found the missions to be repetitive. IMO, almost all MMORPG missions are repetitive. All WoW missions boil down to deliver, collect, or kill. Same here. I happen to find the missions much better written here, however.
3) I have played for hours on end and never experienced the memory leaks he's referring to. My framerates have always remained very high.
4) The population is on the low side - BUT, more are coming in each day. He says the low population makes him think it would have worked better in the Guild Wars model - I disagree. This game right now is exactly like DAoC, and no one ever said that would work better as Guild Wars. The only difference between this game and DAoC is that DAoC has more players. Hopefully, AA will get more soon too with a new advertising campaign and word-of-mouth. I played last night (a Thurs.) and saw people everywhere - I actually spent the whole night chatting instead of playing and had a great time.
5) Yes, we can use more character creation options and more trim features to differentiate our cars. That said, I've *never* seen either another character or another car that looked like mine. I don't see how he can say all of us look alike - that's simply inaccurate.

This follow-up pretty much sums it up for me-- especially the part about repetitive quests. I mean how many ways ARE there really to skin a cat? Would he rather we just grind pikes alone as though we were playing newbie zone EQ or DAoC? At least the devs and writers did a yeoman job of coming up with backstory and rationale for each quest you do.

Also, I am disappointed to see a supposed professional reviewer knock a game for its lack of population! No company is DIRECTLY responsible for who plays it. At best, they can do skillful advertising (which NetDevil botched). Numbers HAVE been creeping up.

Finally, I note that expanded character customization is something they can add later, like DAoC did.

I gave it a 7-something overall too for the rough edges, and because I think they ought to put in SOME kind of mild death penalty (GW has it just right, imho). In general, though. I really enjoy the game, and at this point plan on continuing to play it. I consider how much better games can get over time with constant feedback, patches and expansions.

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