Gameplay

The basic idea behind Full Auto involves you being entered in a racing tournament ,of a different kind, where drivers enter their superbly modified vehicles in hope of winning lucrative sums of money. That's the easy part. The hard part is resisting being blown to the heavens by high-powered explosives and vehicle mounted machine guns. You're put behind the wheel of a car with two weapons mounted on it. Most often, that means you'll have one front-firing weapon and one rear weapon to get enemies keen on taking you out from behind. The weaponry never fails in bringing adolescent fantasies to explosive life. The game boasts vigorous shotguns, rapid-fire machine guns, grenade launchers, mini-cannons, land mines, rockets and much more. As the game goes on you gradually begin to unlock more through races and taking out opponents with your already powerful weaponry. The combat is straightforward. It is as basic as hitting A to use a primary weapon and B to deploy grenades or mines for tailing enemies.

The Career mode of Full Auto differs from many racing games of its genre. For one there is a story. I am not going to judge it harshly because it is clear that the developers have put it second track to the racing carnage. It is just an extra to answer the question of why the races take place. The career mode is fairly lengthy and it's more or less the same action from start to finish. Most of the time you're just racing and shooting continually, which isn't nearly as exciting as it may originally sound. After a very lengthy tutorial area you’ll get the chance to test yourself with increasingly tougher challenges. Objective completion has the basic three ranks of gold, silver, and bronze. The better your medal, the more items you’ll unlock. So you don’t get overwhelmed there is a meter to show how much you have completed.

There are multiple race types in Full Auto. They include the standard lap-based races, knockout races (ala PGR3‘s elimination mode), rampage races that cover the track with target cars for you to take out (ala Burnout), down and back which involves you racing to a point and then turning around only to race back to where you started and down-and-back, where you race to a point, turn around, and point-to-point races.

Up to eight players can take their racing and combat skills online at one time in a race. This is where Full Auto improves on its single player experience. The online multiplayer through Xbox Live is much more fun than the single player modes. That is of course when the lag doesn’t strike. It is hard to tell if the slowdown online is actually lag. From what I have played it seems to be related to the game itself. It was also disappointing to see that there is no way to add bots to fill up a game. In some cases I found it hard to find opponents, leaving me to race in a four or even two player game.

Graphics

Although its hard to look when you are being tailed by an angry victim of your guns seeking revenge it is incredible to see how good things look when they are being blown up. Practically everything you see in the game can be destroyed so the developers had to make sure that there was a certain visual pleasure to it. If you see a shop window, you can race right through it, throwing thousands of shards of glass flying in all directions. The cars sometimes look unnatural though, either too bulky or too slim. In hindsight they actually look better blown up. Practically every layer of a car is destructible and when the pieces fly off it is a rather nice sight especially if you are the inflictor.

The funny thing is that Full Auto looks better when it isn’t moving. There are many cases where framerate drops to a embarrassing level. This is worst when the camera focuses in on a rival’s explosive demise. When its smooth running though the game is basically polished and painted and like many other 360 games, shiny.

Sound

Where are the game soundtracks of old? Are developers so lazy that they believe that gamers are just going to use custom soundtracks anyway? You can see this style with the soundtrack of Full Auto. There’s little substance to it and it is usually drowned out by the loud explosions. Sometimes you won‘t even know its there during a race. Full Auto fully exploits Dolby 5.1 with its high octane explosions. Explosions are frequent and roar like thunder if you have a good surround sound set-up.

Longevity

With a career mode, mini-games, and online/offline multiplayer action, Full Auto offers many ways to play but it doesn’t have enough diversity to remain entertaining for a long time. The career mode gets repetitive well before you finish and the online modes don’t bring much to the overall game. Various game modes will extend your play experience but only if you have a fetish for blowing stuff up.


Final Thought

Full Auto is like an arcade game, designed for short bursts. There’s a lack of structure, flow and permanence to the title, which strips Full Auto to its basic elements, combat and racing. What you have to ask yourself is are you willing to splash out €60 on a game that wont last more than a month or two? I would recommend renting rather than buying in Full Auto’s situation.