At a glance...

Full Auto review

We admit we’re a bit late to the game with this. The Xbox 360 has been out for quite a while now, and yet we’re only just bringing you our first review on the platform. We apologise for this; there’s been a number of reasons behind the delay, including console shortages, staff shortages, time shortages, and a continual flood of games to look at on the PC and PS2. Still, here it is, a review of one of Sega’s early forays into the next generation, Full Auto.

The core concept of the game isn’t particularly ‘next-gen’; it essentially involves you racing through various made-up locations, inflicting damage upon your opponents in order to succeed. Sometimes destroying your opponents - or the surroundings - is the key to unlocking greater rewards. What is ‘next-gen’ are those very surroundings. The urban locations in particular show off the machine’s ability to handle extremely large numbers of particles flying about on-screen. When smashing through glass, or colliding with pillars, the damage is clearly visible, and will remain in place through the whole race. The sheer amount of damage you can do to the environment is impressive, and often it will have gameplay advantages; sometimes you’ll smash your way through a new short cut, or set up a truck in front of an opponent.

All the debris and damage looks rather impressive on a standard TV, but in HD you really get to see this next-gen game shine. Full Auto supports up to 1080i, the highest resolution supported by the 360, and if you have capable equipment, it will look stunning even on very large screens. Instead of realism, Sega have chosen to give the game a more colourful design, complete with a polished (sometimes overly so) look that we’re getting used to seeing. While still next-gen worthy, it lacks the overall glory that the graphics in games like Project Gotham Racing 3 present, offering less ‘wow factor’ to newcomers. Also, the game does occasionally suffer from slowdown; for a game on the most powerful console currently available, this is certainly disappointing, and its a shame Sega weren’t able to fully sort out this issue, which we saw in a pre-release demo, before the game hit the shops.

If the graphics don’t impress, then there are a couple more gameplay tricks up the sleeve. First is the feature that is now compulsory for all arcade racers; the ability to boost. This is earned by sliding around corners in a manner not too dissimilar to the Burnout series, and is then enabled by holding the left bumper. In line with Burnout 2, you can only boost when your meter is full. This seems somewhat of a backwards step for a next-gen game, but is likely to be a gameplay decision by Pseudo Interactive to limit its use. More interestingly, however, is the other power-up; Unwreck. Unique to Full Auto, this function allows you rewind time simply by holding down the right bumper. This can be for as long as you like in order to undo things like a mistimed powerslide, driving into the path of an enemy missile, or even to return you from the wrecked state (much quicker than waiting to normally respawn). Unlike the boost this can be enabled at any time, allowing you to jump back at every incident.

Of course, this has quite an impact on the game. It means that the majority of your mistakes can be undone, taking away part of the skill in winning. So, while the feature is often quite fun to play with, it can make the game far too easy, and has contributed to the fact that I have practically never lost a race.

This is a part of the game’s main overall problem; that after a while it simply becomes tedious. This feeling isn’t immediate, however; the game is initially rather fun, particularly with the amount of destruction you can cause. But a combination of the rather repetitive gameplay, which sees little variation apart from the new weapons and cars you unlock, and this sense of ease leads to a game which is more of a chore to play, making those unlockables one of the only reasons to keep playing. Playing the game in shorter bursts, however, has helped make progress more enjoyable, but it’s still not good when a game doesn’t make me want to keep playing.

One thing that can keep the game in your 360, and keep you coming back to it even after everything is unlocked, is the multiplayer. You can take on other players both locally with the split-screen option, or online via Xbox Live. Both allow you to take part in a range of races you’ve unlocked using the selection of cars you’ve earned during Career mode play. Unwreck, however, isn’t available in this mode, which is understandable due to the nature of the gameplay (how can only one person rewind?), but it is disappointing considering this is a much-publicised feature of the game. Online play is fairly stable, and featured very little lag. It does suffer, however, from a lack of players, with the selection of games on offer usually fairly minimal, and at times, non-existent. As the price of the game drops and the Xbox 360 user base increases this should hopefully improve.

Ratings

Click here to buy Full Auto from Amazon.co.uk.

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