bapenguin
02-21-2006, 08:02 AM
Full Auto Review
Platform: Xbox 360
By: Nicholas “bapenguin” Puleo, Editor-in-Chief
After a two month drought the Xbox 360 finally got a new title other than those released on Live Arcade. Sega’s Full Auto found its way onto the system in the nick of time for hungry 360 gamers.
Gamers got a taste of Full Auto when the demo was released on Live a little over a month ago. Reception was luke warm at best as people complained about frame rate issues as well as gameplay issues. The final version does have some polish over the demo, and the frame rate issues may have disappeared (more on that later), but overall the game is a bit shallow. The multiplayer while being somewhat chaotic may appear fun at first, it really has no depth and no strategy.
The Game
The basic premise of full Auto is simple. Win a race while blowing up your opponents with a vehicle mounted arsenal of weapons. Machine guns, shotguns, missiles, cannons, rockets, mines, and grenades all make an appearance as a choose able weapon for your car. Unfortunately you can’t mix and match these as there are pre-determined weapon sets you must use.
Full Auto offers a few modes of play. Arcade mode is a quick pickup and play style mode. Vs mode allows you to play vs. another player on the same console split screen. Online mode allows you to play via live and Career mode allows you to progress through a series of goal oriented missions.
Career mode starts you out with a bunch of training missions and then you progress upwards from there. There are series of races with a theme tied to it, this could be a car class, a common goal or a race type. The one good thing about all this is there’s a ton of missions. I’d say there are around 100 missions or so. There’s a nice variety here of circuit style survival races, knockout, point to point races as well as something new called Down and Back. With down and back the goal is to get to a point on the track and then turn around and go back where you came from. Sounds simple, but the fun comes when everyone gets to the turn around zone and needs to head the other way into oncoming competitors. With machine guns and rockets blasting it’s quite the spectacle.
The game plays and controls fairly easily. You have two guns on your car at any given time. These guns are in some combination of front and rear, and on some occasions can both be mounted on the front. Usually one of these guns is controllable by the right analog stick so you can aim off your axis. The more damage you cause the more your unreck meter fills up. This is a Prince of Persia rewind time feature and you’ll find yourself using it quite often. Because it’s so easy to fill up the unwreck meter it almost makes the game too easy. Every little mishap during your race you can simply rewind and fix. You get so addicted to using it I found myself trying to unwreck in multiplayer constantly, even though it’s not possible. As you do powerslides, jumps, and other “tricks” you’ll fill up a boost meter which can be used for extra boosts of speed.
Full Auto offers a good variety of cars. There is everything from classic cars, trucks, 70’s muscle cars and even an armored limo. Most of them do feel and control somewhat differently. Make no mistake though, the game is an arcade racer and the cars don’t perform or act in any realistic manner whatsoever. But that’s half the fun.
The loading times while short are quite frequent. The game is constantly going to a loading screen. After every race you can’t simply choose “next race” you have to jump back to the main menu, wait for the loading screen, then choose the race, and wait for the loading screen. It’s quite frustrating even though each load is only 5 or 6 seconds.
The Graphics
The graphics in Full Auto at first glance really aren’t that impressive. Especially when you compare it to PGR3 or Need for Speed Most Wanted. But as you dig deeper you’ll find a game loaded with objects begging for destruction. And everything is destructible. Every building, every wall, every pole, every car. It all blows up or breaks down in some way. The car models look good, and there’s a nice damage model on them.
I’ve seen a lot of mixed reports on the frame rate. I run the game at 720p on my LCD Projector and saw no visible slowdown in any of the single player. Maybe a hiccup here or there when there was simply an insane amount of mayhem and smoke on the screen, otherwise it was silky smooth most of the time. Split screen multiplayer is another story though with tons of frame rate issues. In fact, it was almost not playable in my opinion. I’m not quite sure why there’s so many mixed reports about the frame rate in this game, there must be some variable whether it’s the resolution or display that is causing it to be different from one review to the other.
The Sound
The sound is mediocre at best with engine sounds sounding like a lawn mower. The in game explosions lack some much needed punch. The machine gun doesn’t even sound like a machine gun. The soundtrack for the game is 2nd rate with a mix of bad techno and bad rock/metal.
The custom soundtrack feature is for all intents and purposes broken in the game as well. Your track only works for the current race. Once the race is over you have to go back into the custom soundtrack menu and find a song all over again. It’s a total hassle and totally not worth it.
The Multiplayer
Online multiplayer doesn’t really offer much. There’s no team based play, only free for all. There’s no unwreck feature online either. What there is, is a chaotic mad dash for the finish line with tons of explosions and kills in between. There’s little to any strategy involved. One thing I found frustrating is when you host a match you are always placed at the front of the pack. This is bad! Everyone is behind you, and after the initial grace period everyone will be firing straight at you. You will die, and you will die fast. This brings me to another point; dieing online. When you die you are restarted 2 or 3 seconds on the track from the spot you died at. A lot of times, this is not the best place to restart as you’ll be heading straight into a wall, on top of a pile of rubble or facing the wrong direction.
Overall the multiplayer feels tacked on, it really could have had a lot of potential with team based play. Maybe some arena style tracks where you fight to the death or something.
Overall
There’s a lot of nit-picky type things about Full Auto, but the game does have one thing going for it. The single player is damn fun. The explosions and destruction in the game are so damn cool. You will find yourself laughing out loud at the chaos and crazy things that happen in the game. It’s one of those games with a loose physics model that makes for interesting moments.
I question the game’s length though. You can complete all the races in 6 or 7 hours. It’s not hard to get gold on most of the events on the first run through. This offers little replay ability for the game. Combine that with the disappointing multiplayer and the game is hardly worth a $60 purchase.
The Good:
- Completely destructible environment
- Good track design and variety
- Simply Fun
The Bad:
- Lots of events, but little time required to complete
- Too easy to get Gold
- Lots of loading screens
The Ugly:
- Disappointing multiplayer. No teamplay
- Quirky frame rate issues depending on setup.
The Verdict:
http://www.evilavatar.com/images/icons/e3.jpg
3 out of 5 Evil Eyes
Platform: Xbox 360
By: Nicholas “bapenguin” Puleo, Editor-in-Chief
After a two month drought the Xbox 360 finally got a new title other than those released on Live Arcade. Sega’s Full Auto found its way onto the system in the nick of time for hungry 360 gamers.
Gamers got a taste of Full Auto when the demo was released on Live a little over a month ago. Reception was luke warm at best as people complained about frame rate issues as well as gameplay issues. The final version does have some polish over the demo, and the frame rate issues may have disappeared (more on that later), but overall the game is a bit shallow. The multiplayer while being somewhat chaotic may appear fun at first, it really has no depth and no strategy.
The Game
The basic premise of full Auto is simple. Win a race while blowing up your opponents with a vehicle mounted arsenal of weapons. Machine guns, shotguns, missiles, cannons, rockets, mines, and grenades all make an appearance as a choose able weapon for your car. Unfortunately you can’t mix and match these as there are pre-determined weapon sets you must use.
Full Auto offers a few modes of play. Arcade mode is a quick pickup and play style mode. Vs mode allows you to play vs. another player on the same console split screen. Online mode allows you to play via live and Career mode allows you to progress through a series of goal oriented missions.
Career mode starts you out with a bunch of training missions and then you progress upwards from there. There are series of races with a theme tied to it, this could be a car class, a common goal or a race type. The one good thing about all this is there’s a ton of missions. I’d say there are around 100 missions or so. There’s a nice variety here of circuit style survival races, knockout, point to point races as well as something new called Down and Back. With down and back the goal is to get to a point on the track and then turn around and go back where you came from. Sounds simple, but the fun comes when everyone gets to the turn around zone and needs to head the other way into oncoming competitors. With machine guns and rockets blasting it’s quite the spectacle.
The game plays and controls fairly easily. You have two guns on your car at any given time. These guns are in some combination of front and rear, and on some occasions can both be mounted on the front. Usually one of these guns is controllable by the right analog stick so you can aim off your axis. The more damage you cause the more your unreck meter fills up. This is a Prince of Persia rewind time feature and you’ll find yourself using it quite often. Because it’s so easy to fill up the unwreck meter it almost makes the game too easy. Every little mishap during your race you can simply rewind and fix. You get so addicted to using it I found myself trying to unwreck in multiplayer constantly, even though it’s not possible. As you do powerslides, jumps, and other “tricks” you’ll fill up a boost meter which can be used for extra boosts of speed.
Full Auto offers a good variety of cars. There is everything from classic cars, trucks, 70’s muscle cars and even an armored limo. Most of them do feel and control somewhat differently. Make no mistake though, the game is an arcade racer and the cars don’t perform or act in any realistic manner whatsoever. But that’s half the fun.
The loading times while short are quite frequent. The game is constantly going to a loading screen. After every race you can’t simply choose “next race” you have to jump back to the main menu, wait for the loading screen, then choose the race, and wait for the loading screen. It’s quite frustrating even though each load is only 5 or 6 seconds.
The Graphics
The graphics in Full Auto at first glance really aren’t that impressive. Especially when you compare it to PGR3 or Need for Speed Most Wanted. But as you dig deeper you’ll find a game loaded with objects begging for destruction. And everything is destructible. Every building, every wall, every pole, every car. It all blows up or breaks down in some way. The car models look good, and there’s a nice damage model on them.
I’ve seen a lot of mixed reports on the frame rate. I run the game at 720p on my LCD Projector and saw no visible slowdown in any of the single player. Maybe a hiccup here or there when there was simply an insane amount of mayhem and smoke on the screen, otherwise it was silky smooth most of the time. Split screen multiplayer is another story though with tons of frame rate issues. In fact, it was almost not playable in my opinion. I’m not quite sure why there’s so many mixed reports about the frame rate in this game, there must be some variable whether it’s the resolution or display that is causing it to be different from one review to the other.
The Sound
The sound is mediocre at best with engine sounds sounding like a lawn mower. The in game explosions lack some much needed punch. The machine gun doesn’t even sound like a machine gun. The soundtrack for the game is 2nd rate with a mix of bad techno and bad rock/metal.
The custom soundtrack feature is for all intents and purposes broken in the game as well. Your track only works for the current race. Once the race is over you have to go back into the custom soundtrack menu and find a song all over again. It’s a total hassle and totally not worth it.
The Multiplayer
Online multiplayer doesn’t really offer much. There’s no team based play, only free for all. There’s no unwreck feature online either. What there is, is a chaotic mad dash for the finish line with tons of explosions and kills in between. There’s little to any strategy involved. One thing I found frustrating is when you host a match you are always placed at the front of the pack. This is bad! Everyone is behind you, and after the initial grace period everyone will be firing straight at you. You will die, and you will die fast. This brings me to another point; dieing online. When you die you are restarted 2 or 3 seconds on the track from the spot you died at. A lot of times, this is not the best place to restart as you’ll be heading straight into a wall, on top of a pile of rubble or facing the wrong direction.
Overall the multiplayer feels tacked on, it really could have had a lot of potential with team based play. Maybe some arena style tracks where you fight to the death or something.
Overall
There’s a lot of nit-picky type things about Full Auto, but the game does have one thing going for it. The single player is damn fun. The explosions and destruction in the game are so damn cool. You will find yourself laughing out loud at the chaos and crazy things that happen in the game. It’s one of those games with a loose physics model that makes for interesting moments.
I question the game’s length though. You can complete all the races in 6 or 7 hours. It’s not hard to get gold on most of the events on the first run through. This offers little replay ability for the game. Combine that with the disappointing multiplayer and the game is hardly worth a $60 purchase.
The Good:
- Completely destructible environment
- Good track design and variety
- Simply Fun
The Bad:
- Lots of events, but little time required to complete
- Too easy to get Gold
- Lots of loading screens
The Ugly:
- Disappointing multiplayer. No teamplay
- Quirky frame rate issues depending on setup.
The Verdict:
http://www.evilavatar.com/images/icons/e3.jpg
3 out of 5 Evil Eyes