It’s been a hard crawl for those of us who were lucky enough to land Xbox360’s before Christmas. The first new release to grace Microsoft’s ivory super-beast since Dead or Alive back in December is Sega’s arcade racer Full Auto. Is it worth the cash? Can it fill the void for greedy 360 owners looking for something new to play? Maybe.
Full Auto takes cues from Criterion’s excellent Burnout series; it’s a hard hitting arcade racer with an emphasis on destruction and carnage. What it does differently, however, is add big bore firepower to the mix. You take to the streets in larger than life muscle cars and hot rods laden with machine guns, rockets, cannons, grenades, and all sorts of fun implements of destruction. Pretty much everything you see on a particular course is destructable, including the other racers. The concept is pretty straight forward – race to the finish and blow up everything you see. There are plenty of gameplay modes, including the traditional multiplayer, career(where you’ll probably spend the majority of time) and arcade modes, and there’s a decent enough tutorial which teaches you the inns and outs of the game. So what’s not to like?
Races consist of a few laps of carnage and explosions, rinse, repeat ad infinitum. Have I mentioned how much this game resembles Burnout yet? There’s just no depth here, none. You unlock weapons, new paint jobs, vehicles and such, and you’ll get some achievement points to make your gamercard look nice, but after a few tracks everything just starts to blend together. The vehicles all feel about the same, the sense of speed never really hits the heights of something like Burnout Revenge, and the car handling is terrible – there’s no feeling of weight or grip to the vehicles, they all slide around like bars of soap on a wet bathtub. About the only significant differences between rides (that I noticed) is how much punishment a particular vehicle can take. The level of destructibility in the environments is pretty impressive, but really doesn’t serve any purpose in the grand scheme of things – the first race in the tutorial (a straight up “clean” run) really feels no different from the later runs, outside of the explosions. The game also gives you a rewind feature to go along with the traditional “boost” feature, so that you can flip time backwards and avoid that nasty crash or screw-up that may have cost you the race. It’s a neat little feature that actually works pretty well. The boost works much like other racers, build up the boost meter and you’ll get your typical nitrous-oxide style boost of speed. Courses are pretty standard fare city runs and what not – nothing you haven’t seen before.
Full Auto really shines in the graphical department. This is a damn nice looking game. Cars all shine and shimmer, reflect their surroundings, and generally look like highly stylized racers. The particle effects and lighting are also solid, as are the wonderfully rendered explosions. It’s not a showpiece for the Xbox360 by any means, but it’s probably a little glossier than anything you’d see on the old Xbox. It definitely wears it’s Burnout influences on it’s sleeve, both in the car designs, and in the text effects, motion blurring, and general sheen of the action during a race. Seeing as how Burnout Revenge was one of the nicest looking games on the last generation of consoles, this is hardly a complaint. The destruction also looks absolutely fantastic, towers break apart and crumble to the ground in shards, buildings explode in a shower of glass, steel, and flame, Cars erupt and deform, flipping end over end leaving trails of smoke, and bullets tear chunks out of everything they hit. At times the screen is utterly littered with flying debris, and yet the frame rate remains consistent throughout.
Sound wise, Full Auto really doesn’t do anything special. Sound effects are pretty stock affairs, explosions are passable, but really lack any sort of heavy presence. Car sounds are generic, but differ between vehicles. The soundtrack is also hopelessly generic rock and techno stuff – thankfully you can break out the custom soundtracks.
Overall, the complete lack of anything even remotely resembling depth keeps me from wholeheartedly recommending Full Auto. If you played the hell out of the Burnout series, or you’re looking for something you can enjoy in quick bursts, then Full Auto may be right up your alley. The multi-player is enjoyable, as long as you don’t go for marathon sessions. Parents – despite the “T” rating, this thing might be just the game for little Timmy or Johnny, and it’s halfway entertaining to watch.
Overall: 6 (out of 10)
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