Exclusive Double Feature!

MMORPG.com: Is the game more mission or free-roam oriented (i.e. GTA 4), and what sort of tasks will players be able to undertake?

Guinn: There's a substantial story arc in Auto Assault that sends players all over the game world as they progress through many varied and exciting tasks. However, at any point on that journey, players may ‘roam’ to investigate new areas, annihilate enemy groups, or level everything in their paths. That's actually a very cool aspect of the game. Because of the way everything is modeled in the Havoc physics engine, you can just go driving and have some fun. So rather than just running to the next quest or mission, perhaps avoiding aggroing mobs on the way, you can now blast across the land, mowing down NPC enemies and see them rag-doll into the air; you can leap a giant chasm (and get a medal for it!), blow up an enemy outpost (smash it to the ground with your weapons or by using your vehicle as a bettering ram) and so on. Missions will vary widely from recon maneuvers to kill-tasks to sequentially triggered events and on and on.

I spent countless hours growing up playing the Steve Jackson PnP game Car Wars. Me and my little gaming group played the game so much we wrote our own expansions for it, created new maps, anything we could think of to extend the game's life and enjoyability. When it was all said and done I swear we probably had a good ten expansion packs worth of material. So all that being said, naturally when I heard Netdevil was making a game called Auto Assault built around the same general concept my interest was more than just a little piqued. The more I read about it, the more hyped I became. These days I can easily say it's by far on the top of my "Most Anticipated" list.

In case you haven't heard of Auto Assault I'll give you a brief rundown on it. Follow me if you will through a path of enlightenment. Think back to those great movies like Mad Max, Roadwarrior, and Deathrace 2000 etc. Picture a post apocalyptic world of the future where three surviving "races" (for lack of a better term) fight for much needed resources and territory. Vehicles of all sorts decked out with any kind of weapon you can imagine tearing up the desolate wastelands, mowing down pedestrians like they were running over dandelions. The smell of burning rubber and gasoline heavy in the air as you chase an enemy faction member down the highway; honestly now, what could be better than all of that?