Auto Assault is the product of one too many beer fuelled nights spent watching episodes of Knight Rider and the entire back catalogue of the Mad Max films. An attempt to curb the usual traditional MMO trademarks, there are no orcs or goblins, no dragons or wizards, just big cars with big guns engaging in testosterone bouts of mindless carnage.

The story goes that there was a cataclysmic event that befell the Earth, something involving bizarre alien meteorites, mutations and nuclear war. Its all rather absurd nonsensical sci-fi blabber but does provide Auto Assault with an intriguing setting, one of a scorched planet riddled with the ruins of dead cities and towns and now littered with the remnants of humankind. Amidst all this you must blast your way to supremacy for one of the three dominant factions that have emerged and are now vying for control; the Humans, the Biomeks and the Mutants.

Each faction comes with their own starting areas, their own vehicles (which can later be tuned up with pointless but pretty fixtures or replaced altogether with new vehicles) and they each have their own look but are bound with the same four choices of character class, despite differing names and descriptions stating otherwise. They fit neatly into familiar templates; the warrior class, the healer, the scout and the leader (the guys who get their pets to their dirty work for them), but for once the individual skills each class brings has no real bearing on their effectiveness out in the field.

Unlike your usual MMO the skills, techniques and abilities you can learn with each class never seem to add a whole lot that machineguns and rockets don't already bring in spades. With the exception of some key abilities, such as healing or having the choice to call pets, special attacks gained from levelling up just aren't that effective. With a limitless supply of ammunition and only overheating of weapons causing any real concerns, it's easier to just blast away with your mounted weapons than rely on special skills. This is an action game through and through; don't let its occasional leaning to MMO territory fool you otherwise.

All that said however, it isn't one to skip the usual trademarks often associated with these types of games and is quick to put you at the butt end of an excessive array of quests in order to gain experience points and rewards. These never roam from the usual 'Delivery' or 'Kill' objectives, with bone idle townsfolk at every settlement handing out the same missions with the same smattering of lore thrown in to try and pull you into its world, but largely failing at making these encounters feel any less like of a grind.

This doesn't mean the game can't be fun though; quite the opposite, in fact. While general questing can be a bore, there's still plenty to shoot with environments so packed with bandits, mutants and other wasteland denizens that you are never far from random battles and mindless destruction. Everything can be destroyed, bar only the largest structure. It's impossible to drive down the road without levelling entire towns to their foundations or exploding cars into showers of burning metal. It's all handled rather impressively, with a fully-fledged physics engine, bouncing objects off of one another with gleeful results.

The unfortunate result of all this impressive display of physics is a sacrifice in performance speed. It's not an attractive game either; in fact, I'd be more inclined to call it ugly - with constant browns and greys colouring the environment, it's not an immediately interesting place to roam, but more often seeing is never quite as problematic as attempting to navigate. There are huge performance hits throughout, especially when things get hectic and the numerous players, NPCs and physics all collide. Make no mistake, those recommended specs the game throws at you will struggle and anyone without the appropriate amount of RAM needed to render the impressive environments are going have a hard time trying to coax an acceptable frame rate out of the game.

Back on the road, there is no penalty for death, tearing your vehicle from the wastelands once it gets destroyed (and unless you choose the warrior class, chances are that'll happen sooner rather than later) and placing it at one of many repair stations littered throughout the world. You only ever have the inconvenience of repairing and recharging to worry about (all free of charge), with vehicles being so speedy that it's easy to get back to where you were prior to being turned into scrap metal.

And while on the subject of scrap, throughout the relentless destruction your vehicle will unleash, certain items from annihilated structures and defeated foes can be collected. Later these can be used in the many towns throughout each environment - towns that act as the main social hubs and allow you to spot your character out of the vehicle - they can then be refined to allow the construction of new items or the repair of old ones. Weapons, armour and power units can be crafted, while some items collected out in the wastelands can be backwards engineered in order to get their blueprints and allow their construction. Eventually it'll be possible to construct some of the most powerful items in the game, but it doesn't come swiftly, in fact, thanks to a complete lack of help offered to guide you through the initial stages of the crafting system, it's easy to completely neglect this aspect of the game to begin with, clogging up your inventory with bits and pieces of junk.

There's also a problem with the social aspect of the game, in that it rarely seems to actually require you to use the help of others. While trading and joint questing are still a part of the game, it's far easier to go it alone, with few actual benefits to grouping. There are no dungeons to fight through, at least none that I found, while server population being as low as it is at the current time means that attempting to find a group (or convoy as they are called here) is never as easy a task as it is in other MMO games. But this doesn't really matter, as Auto Assault plays like a single player game with few instances that actually require assistance and numerous bosses that roam the world, which are easily dealt with when using the correct weapons at the corret level. It's perhaps both Auto Assault's greatest draw and ultimately it's biggest downfall.

While possibly one of the easiest MMO's to get to grips with, and a leaning towards fun, enjoyable carnage, it just doesn't have any long-term appeal. The action is repetitive to the extreme, with no variation on the run and gun theme and too little variety offered through quests or the environments. While there is the option to get involved in some Player Vs Player action, this feels more like a sideline option than a dedicated part of the game. There's no duelling, although players can fight it out amongst themselves in specially designed arena battles (again this is something you'll easily ignore due to no information actually telling you where or how you can access it, I only found it by chance), while cross faction fighting is saved for the end levels, where everyone can get involved in all out free-for-all fights in contested lands, but only once you've grinded your way through your own faction's territory.

In the end, Auto Assault's greatest failing is that it just doesn't have that draw to keep you coming back. A dedicated few may stick with it for longer and hopefully with time NCSoft will provide the game with the updates and additions it needs to compete with the big boys of the MMO world, but for now it feels too much like a single player game with some nice multiplayer options, and there's no real incentive for you to invest much time or money in it once the free trial has ended.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).