Auto Assault Q&A at GameSpot
I saw a blurb over at Blue's News pointing to an Auto Assault Q&A at GameSpot. Although the interview with President of NetDevil, Scott Brown, talks about a lot of tweaking, polishing and balancing being done by the team to finish up Auto Assault for launch, I find myself compelled by the same bit that Blue posted:
Now, I have yet to play this game (even though the blokes at NetDevil work right across town from me and Scott's a bit of a friend by now... hmmm... I need to make a phone call!!) but I am conjuring up thoughts of rampant destruction and chaotic kablooey-ness. I'll say up front that I hope the game doesn't go the way of just being an elaborate Twisted Metal: Black Online, which admittedly was a great deal of fun up-front, but it didn't last very long for me. All reports about AA I've read point toward a very fun, visceral experience, which is very encouraging. I'm just hoping the roleplaying aspects are deep enough to make it a broader game than just the character development bits in-between more car crashes and big explosions.Players are really having fun with the destructive nature of the game. It seems to be a great deal of fun to drive around and destroy just about every object in the world.
Honestly, it's not the gameplay issues around a mega-destructive game that I'm pondering here... I'm thinking it's the idea of which players this game style will attract to the game. Yeah. That's really a lot of my apprehension... what if this all-out destruction-fest (with the sweet Havok physics and all) brings all the aggressive, ganking, jerky-boys from the MMO world in droves? Maybe ganking won't be an issue gameplay-wise (again, I haven't done my homework about the game) but I sincerely hope the social and mental demeanor of the general player base has people I'll enjoy playing with. Of course, there's always good & bad, but let's face it, there are several games in the past that really encouraged the griefers to come out and play.
Well, I'll stop typing... now.