Full Auto

Sega's action-packed racer isn't quite the game we hoped it would be.

Back at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2005 I saw a game that looked like it was going to be an absolute must-have experience for the new Xbox 360. That game was Full Auto from Sega and developer Pseudo Interactive. But in a classic case of a game being more sizzle than steak, Full Auto fails to live up to its early promise, with core gameplay that is extremely limited and little depth of play. In a refreshing departure from modern games that feel you simply have to have some kind of story to justify the existence of the game, Full Auto offers no reason why you are racing around in a heavily-armed vehicle and blowing other racers and environmental stuff to hell. No, I think once you are sitting in a heavily-armed car with other heavily-armed cars around just aching to snuff you with a wide variety of death dealers, you figure out why you’re doing it pretty quickly. Of course did we ever need a reason to blow crap up in a video game? Not me! I’ve been doing it since Space Invaders. It is fun and that should be enough for anyone.

When it comes to wanton destruction, Full Auto is at the top of the class. Everything seems to blow up in spectacular fashion – especially once you apply a little weapons fire to them. Other racers, innocent bystanders, buildings, you name it, it blows up. The satisfaction of taking down the opponent that has been bedevilling you is sweet, but taking out a parked tanker truck is pure gaming joy. And while the primary use for your weapons is to make sure you win the race by judicious application of firepower to other racers, you’ll also get Wreak Points for just about any destruction you do. Without a doubt, the destruction quotient is the main attraction of Full Auto. Of course destruction doesn’t just happen. No, it takes weapons to initiate an explosion and in Full Auto you’ll be armed to the teeth. The variety is a little generic, but most get the job done well. Generally a car is armed with one front-firing and one rear-firing weapon. Naturally the front weapon is used in an aggressive manner to waste any opponent that might have the audacity to get in front of you. The rear-firing weapon is more useful at slowing down an opponent that might be dogging your bumper and nipping at your heels. Weapons include machine guns, mini-rocket pods, tank cannons, heavy missiles, mines, shotguns, grenade launchers and a smoke screen to blind opponents. Each weapon comes in three levels of effectiveness to increase the damage dealt. Many of the front-firing weapons are fixed-aim weapons that can only hit a target if the car’s nose is pointed directly at it. Others can be traversed with the right analogue stick to take out targets with a side shot.

Of course with all this destruction, you can bet Full Auto does not have licensed vehicles. No auto manufacturer in its right mind would let anyone do to their cars what gets done to these. No problem, Full Auto offers some really nice vehicles that are very reminiscent of American hotrod muscle cars and a selection of cars that approximate generic auto types. There are 21 cars in all. Want to take the family Suburban Assault Vehicle into a combat race? There is a car in the game’s stable that will fulfil your fantasy. The soccer mom who harbours a fantasy to run amuck is going to be disappointed though. There is no mini van. Each of the cars is rated in terms of speed, handling and durability. Durability may have more accurately been called "armour" because it really rates how much punishment your car can take before it bites the big one. Up until now you’re probably thinking that Full Auto sounds pretty cool and want to give it a spin. But the damper on your enjoyment is going to be that it fails in what should be its core gameplay element: racing the car. Sadly the game never gets above tepid mediocrity as a racer. The tracks are nothing special and it takes little skill to race around them well with your car. There are some shortcuts to find along the way, but none really give you a real sense of doing something beyond the ordinary race. Add to that only three actual environments in which to race, and you’ll have seen all the scenery pretty quickly. The car handling is also overly generic with little obvious difference to the player other than durability.

The much-touted "unwreck", a feature that allows the player to back up time a little after a bad decision has caused a wipeout or when you were a little too slow to see the last shortcut, can be some fun, but it is not a cure-all. You only get so much unwreck time. More is earned by your destructiveness on the track. Absent a catastrophic wreck, you’ll find yourself hoarding the unwreck time for when you might really need it rather than using it freely to correct some small misstep. When you get into a bad situation with no unwreck time left, you’ll find yourself using the self-destruct command that allows you to blow yourself up and then restart fresh at the same position on the track. Driving modes are pretty much what you’d expect from a racing game. Career mode is the main single-player mode. In it you participate in a series of races where clearing the event will unlock additional content. There is also a mode where a player can just jump in for a quick single race. It is an Xbox 360 game, so naturally there is support for online multiplayer racing for up to eight players. In split-screen mode two players can race together. In a disturbing omission that I hope is not a trend, there is no support for System Link play.

Race types include Circuit Racing (laps), Point-to-Point (drive quickly between two points), a variation of Point-to-Point called Down-and-Back (drive between two points then turn around and come back), Rampage (destroy a set number of bystanders in allotted time) and Lap Knockout (last car of each lap is retired until only one remains). Graphically the game looks detailed and shiny. The destructible environments look good and come apart nicely. Cars (player, opponent and bystander) also look good and explode asunder with great gusto. Adding to the graphical elements are various cameras that allow you to see the action in greater detail and even replay it. Look quickly though. There is no way to save those great wrecks to the hard drive. There are some minor frame rate issues, but I don’t feel they damage the experience too much. Sound is good with full-throated engine roars, jarring explosions and weapons fire. It’s quite impressive with surround sound.

What in the end keeps Full Auto from being worth the steep $60 price of admission is its lack of depth. Honestly, in just a couple of hours you can see most of what this title has to offer. The mayhem you can cause as you race is impressive, but unfortunately there is just not a great driving game with play variety here to back up the destruction element. It may have been a month and a half since the last Xbox 360 game reached retailer shelves, but I have to recommend that anxious 360 owners wait a little longer before investing in a new game. For now; rent Full Auto, enjoy what there is here, and look forward to March in the hopes that the Xbox 360 version of Burnout Revenge will put the racing and destruction together in an outstanding manner.

This review courtesy of our friends at Gameshark .