#Autoduel map full

Manchester, New Hampshire has the Origin Systems headquarters (they were located there at the time) entering the building gives you a little advertisement about upcoming games. More out of curiosity than anything else, I decided to visit every city on the map and took courier missions accordingly.

#Autoduel map full

Once I was strong enough to win most combats on the road, I felt more comfortable leaving the comfort of New York with its full slate of services. One awful courier job and a couple of really good ones.

I settled into a process of going between Philadelphia, New York, Albany, and Boston for most of this middle section. Finally, to save time, you want an 'AAA' building in your destination city so you can immediately get another job. You also want to avoid having to go too far for too little reward, or taking missions that are too time-sensitive (there's an option to 'sell' courier jobs in bars, but you lose prestige doing so). But not all cities offer all amenities in particular, weapons stores and garages are absent from many of them. To fully recover after a combat, you have to be able to a) repair your car in a garage b) recharge the battery in a garage or truck stop c) replenish ammunition in a weapons shop and d) sell any salvage at a salvage yard (this one is admittedly the least important). I fought these battles in the context of running courier missions between cities. Treating trees like an obstacle course helped me master the controls. So while there are some tactics associated with outfitting the vehicle, when combat actually begins, controller dexterity matters more than anything. Once the shooting starts, one of you is usually dead within 3 seconds. Once an enemy crashes into you, it becomes difficult to turn and fire, so you need to use that second to either whip the car around and head in the other direction, blasting him with rear weapons, or to line up the front of your car with his and use forward weapons. From the moment an enemy appears on screen, you only have about a second to react effectively before he's upon you. Screen shots don't really convey how fast the combat is. You have to defeat around 10 foes-they never fight each other, just you-and some of them strip away your armor with a few laser cannon shots. The first time I entered one of these, I got beat down hard. There are several levels of arena tournaments-all of which I accidentally excluded myself from by buying too-expensive a car-plus 'city championships' every 12 weeks.

This is done primarily by fighting in the arena and making successful courier runs along the eastern seaboard. The mid-game is a process of improving your character's statistics and reputation so you can survive the endgame. I've already described the opening stages.