Introduction

When we heard about a game that involved racing cars while trying to destroy everything in your path, we were obviously enthralled by the idea. Developed by Sega, Full Auto attempts to bring the driving genre to a whole new level by combining fast-paced arcade style driving with a substantial arsenal to dispose your rivals with. To say the least, Full Auto is an innovative title that does a great job at distinguishing itself from the mainstream of games.

So what’s Full Auto all about?

Basically, Full Auto is a car combat game where racers not only compete based on speed, but also on how much destruction they cause. Wreck points can be earned by crashing into any destructible object in the environment or by shooting up traffic and other racers. By wreaking havoc throughout a course, you can effectively fill your unwreck meter, which allows you to go back in time, which comes in handy if you head straight on into a wall. Boost can also be charged by power sliding and catching air, and this often can decide the difference between a first and second place finish. Most importantly, every ride can be tricked out from a few pre-defined weapon sets, therefore adding another dimension to the game. Whether you prefer to go full auto with a machine gun setup, or if you enjoy being more tactical by dropping a smokescreen from your rear bumper, each weapon loadout caters to a specific preference.

Full Graphics

Visually speaking, Full Auto looks like a next-gen title, but a few technical glitches prevent it from being top of the line material. As one could expect, on a HDTV there are virtually no rough edges, the car models have a high reflection update rate, and the endless stream of fiery explosions bring warmth to your soul. The level designs are also diversified; one moment you can be plowing through a crowded market, while shortly thereafter you can be blaring through a burning building. The lighting effects work wonders on the roads, and watching every part of the environment crumble to pieces is a great sight. Unfortunately, the frame rates get bogged down too frequently whenever there are a few too many explosions or other racers on the screen. Whenever you get to a good part in the game everything just seems to slow down, which can be turn off for some. Still, Full Auto is somewhat playable during these phases, and irregardless it’s still a great looking title overall.

Music to my Ears

Although the musical selection isn’t particularly great, the sound effects are more than enough to get the adrenaline flowing through your body. To go along with the action, a basic soundtrack with various techno and rock beats is included, but the songs usually go unheard amidst all of the chaos. On the downside, a glitch in the programming prevents you from being able to use a custom soundtrack because the game keeps reverting back to its own music, but this shouldn’t be too devastating. There’s never a dull moment in Full Auto, so you will always hear machine guns firing, cars exploding, fires burning, glass shattering, and tires squealing just to name a few. If that isn’t enough, the engines have a deep, throaty roar that makes them feel even more powerful. There’s so much commotion going on constantly, and luckily the audile department does a great job at letting the gamer know.

Lock and Load

The main career mode is the heart of the game filled with various challenges and unlockable goodies. Missions are divided up into classes, the first class being the tutorial one. Each mission has its own bronze objective for passing, a semi-auto medal for passing with style, and a coveted full-auto medal for meeting all of the objectives with ease. Earning a better medal can unlock new skins and colors for your cars, and usually to unlock new cars and tracks you only need a satisfactory passing rating. A few new classes become available right off the bat, including Underdogs, where you must compete against cars that can outperform yours, and time trial, where it’s just you against the clock.

As mentioned, each mission has objectives that must be completed in order to succeed. Bronze objectives are relatively easy and usually involve completing the track within a certain time limit or finishing above a certain position. Semi-auto medals take the challenge to the next level by requiring you to not only finish faster, but there may even be a certain number of wreck points to be earned or rivals to be killed. The full-auto medals are the cream of the crop, so you need to do everything required in the semi-auto objectives, just better.

Cars are ranked and put into a class D through A based on their durability, handling and speed. Some of the beginning, slower cars are closely related to Jeeps and pickup trucks, while the faster, more fragile cars can be compared to a Lexus or Dodge Viper. Weapon loadouts are also rated in tiers, with level 1 being the weakest and level 3 being the most powerful. As weapons improve, they usually do more damage, fire faster, covering a wider range, and can even take longer to overheat. Certain weapons can be mounted on in the front or the rear depending on what they are. It’s typical to have some type of machine gun or rocket launcher on the hood, while you can drop mines and grenades from the rear. Some weapons can even be aimed by the user via the right control stick, and clicking the stick will fire, making it fairly easy to aim and shoot.

Burnin’ Rubber

The actual gaming experience in Full Auto feels very fresh and innovative at the start, but as you dive deeper into the gamer the effect slowly wears off. Still, this is one of the few titles that will compel you to play until the very end, and in the end you should feel like you got your money’s worth.

The bumper-to-bumper racing is fast paced and intense, and there’s no such thing as an easy victory here. Fortunately, the unwreck feature lets you travel back a significant amount of time just in case you wreck horribly, but if your meter isn’t filled you could be in trouble. Select is the default self-destruct button, which surprisingly can be used in a variety of situations. If you manage to get yourself stuck up on a wall or if you have low health, sometimes you just need to blow yourself up and start fresh. Every ride has armor on all four sides, and once an entire side is depleted every collision from that direction could be your last.

Aside from the armor meter, the HUD is filled with other useful information. The rearview mirror is easy to use and can help you place attacks from your rear secondary weapon. The map in the lower left corner shows the track layout as well as where opponents and rivals are so you can always be aware of where incoming fire is coming from. The two weapon meters show what condition your primary and secondary weapons are in. If there is ever a complete red circle it means you have overheated something, so you must for the timer to countdown before you can continue firing.

The car physics are a little on the clunky side, so it does take a little bit of time to adjust to the clumsy feeling. Controlling a power slide takes a lot of precision because over or under steering can quickly result in a wipeout. The cars are definitely responsive enough, but the back ends feel a little too heavy if you turn hard. Aside from this though, the game is a total blast. Flying down the streets while crashing through buildings and ramming traffic alone is a great experience, and when you include shooting at everything in sight the formula undoubtedly had to work out.

Although the initial effect of wrecking everything might become tedious for those who simply rapid fire nonstop, there are still plenty of different game modes to keep the game feeling fresh. Special opponents called rivals (similar to the ones in Burnout: Revenge) are faster and deadlier than your average racer, but killing them results in an extra score bonus. The course variety also changes things up a lot; some levels are filled with large straightaways and epic jumps, while others are more tightly wound and involve a lot of power sliding. When this is combined with different car classes, weapon layouts, and race modes, Full Auto definitely delivers a downright enjoyable adventure.

Multiplayer and Xbox Live

Full Auto supports both split-screen action and racing over Xbox Live to keep gamers going after everything has been unlocked. Arcade modes like point-to-point and traditional circuit races are available, as well as special destruction challenges too. On Xbox Live you can expect all of the standard online components like Leaderboards, and finding a game to join is a relatively simple process. Unfortunately, there is no unwrecking in any of these head to head modes, and the gameplay still occasionally suffers from frame rate drops. As a whole though, there’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t try out this game with some buddies.

Conclusion

If it wasn’t for the aforementioned performance flaws and the somewhat repetitive gameplay, Full Auto could’ve been one of the greatest games of the year. However, seeing the frame rate drop every time a massive explosion greatly takes away from the fun factor, and it also prevents this game from delivering a blazing sense of speed. While the game doesn’t evolve a whole lot from the start, this unconventional idea makes it a game that everyone should at least rent. There are plenty of moments where Full Auto shows off its true potential when you’re whizzing by traffic furiously attempting to dodge bullets, and for this it is easily a recommendable title.