The genesis of Auto Assault began a long time ago, in a darkened theater where a generation of gamers had their brains completely twisted by Mel Gibson's post-apocalyptic car-combat movie The Road Warrior. Since then, the idea of strapping heavy weaponry to Detroit heavy metal has been implemented in a variety of ways, starting with pen-and-paper RPGs like Steve Jackson's Car Wars through Interstate '76 and classic console franchises like Twisted Metal. It was only a matter of time before a game developer tried to translate that post-apocalyptic gasoline-and-torn-leather aesthetic to the MMO space and offer gamers the opportunity to truly live out their Mad Max fantasies.

Enter developer NetDevil and Auto Assault, the so-called "fastest MMO ever made." I've been eagerly following the post-apocalyptic car-combat MMO since it was first announced and -- after several delays -- Auto Assault has officially hit the road. The good news is the game has made a dramatic turnaround in the last several months. Most of the major problems we experienced in our earlier testing have been fixed. While I haven't yet had the chance to explore as much of the game as I would like, I have played enough to say that the game so far is a lot of fun, with plenty of interesting things to see and do and loads of content to keep players busy. The bad news is that there are still some elements of the game missing and others that are only partially implemented and need to be balanced; it doesn't take long before you start to realize how much work NetDevil has in front of them.