After the introduction is over, it's apparent that Full Auto is an extremely full on title. The main single player option in the game is the career mode. In the career mode you begin with a slow car and some basic weapons (front and rear weapons). The first levels are tutorial levels which help you to get a grasp of all the different concepts of the game. As you progress through the career mode, you unlock greater weapons as well as faster and stronger vehicles. Each race in the career mode has different objectives, from scoring a certain amount of wreck points through to executing a rival. It's possible to complete the mission in a variety of ranks, and if you get the “full auto” rank then you can unlock things like different car colours. The career mode also features a lot of different race modes to play through including knockout races, lap based races and rampage races, but they all play out very similarly.
You'd hope he has insurance.
In game, there's a few things that make Full Auto a little different to your conventional car combat title. Every time you slide around a corner, you increase your boost meter and, when you accumulate enough boost, you get a quick speed fix. One of the most unique features in the game is the “unwreck” meter. Throughout a race your “unwreck” meter fills and if you crash your vehicle or get taken out by an opponent then you can rewind time a few seconds to before the incident took place.
As well as the career mode there is also an arcade mode. The arcade mode allows you to play through with all the cars and tracks that you've unlocked from the career mode. The arcade mode isn't really that riveting though because it doesn't have any real objectives, so it's unlikely you'll spend too much time with it. There is also a split-screen two player mode. When playing in two player it isn’t possible to use the “unwreck” feature, which is a little disappointing. We also had a few frame rate issues in multiplayer as well. As you would expect, the game has full Xbox Live support for up to eight players. The online play contains leaderboards and it’s possible to play through any of the single player race types. Once again you can't use the unwreck ability online though, which makes this game feel like just about every other car combat game online.
Gameplay wise the game is a little shallow. The unwreck feature is certainly handy, but it isn’t essential, which makes the feature basically redundant halfway through the game. This is the same with the boost feature; as the boost only lasts a few seconds, half of the time you actually forget to use it because it doesn’t make that much of a difference. Even though there are a few different objectives, the career mode still becomes repetitive after a while, which means that actually getting through it without feeling bored can be a bit of a challenge.
A lot of potential for mindless destruction here.
Happily though, the environments themselves are highly interactive and destructible, which means that, come the end of a race, the tracks have a tendency to look like a warzone. The frame rate can be a bit of an issue at times however - when you execute an opponent during a race, the game slows down and zooms in on the vehicle you’ve destroyed and when this happens the frame rate slows down considerably. During the middle of a race, if there's a lot happening on screen, the action will also drag, which is extremely off-putting.
Frame rate issues aside, the game looks pretty remarkable at times. There's a lot of detail packed into the tracks and the cars all have a unique, colourful look. The damage model in the game is great and the cars really do take a lot of damage before crumbling to pieces. However, the frame rate issues don't give the game a great sense of speed which is disappointing. The sound is exactly as you would expect from a car combat title. The music in the game is relatively basic but quietens down during a race, which means you don't really hear much of the sound anyway. The game does support custom soundtracks, but even then it's difficult to hear your own songs at times.
The tracks often look like a warzone at the end of a race.
There are a lot of things to unlock throughout the career mode including new car colours and twenty new vehicles. One thing we did realise is that a lot of the achievements in the game are unlocked within the first half an hour. To get some of the other achievements you need to work thoroughly through the career mode, which isn't as easy as it seems. The multiplayer should extend how much time you spend with the game, but not considerably.
Full Auto is a bit of a disappointment. This could have been a game that demonstrated exactly what the Xbox 360 was capable of, but the frame rate issues some rather shallow gameplay let the side down. If you're after a car combat game that doesn't take itself too seriously then you could do a lot worse than Full Auto, but if you're looking for a racing game that demonstrates the potential of the Xbox 360 and offers oodles of depth, then you're better off looking elsewhere.
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