Title: Full Auto

Date: 03.05.2006

Genre: Destructive Racing

Platform: Xbox 360

Developer: Pseudo Interactive

Publisher: Sega

Nearly all of the big name game media outlets receive their games free from the publishers. Rarely will they ever have to shell out their own money to purchase a game to review. We say this so you understand where we are coming from. 95% of our game reviews are based on games we’ve purchased with our own money. So when you see a score like the one we gave Full Auto, you’ll have a better understanding why it was scored this way. Please read on…

Story
There is no story. It’s as simple as that. You are a mystery man or maybe mystery woman, or even mystery transgender who races in a car with guns. It’s a compelling story and if you don’t cry at the end then you have no heart.

Graphics
Better than Xbox graphics but not jaw dropping next gen graphics. The tracks are decent to look at, not as good as Project Gotham 3 but considering your blowing up whatever you see it’s better to focus on simple graphics. The cars are shinny but not PGR3 quality but they do take lots of damage and look cool blowing up. Buildings will have glass explode, parts crumble, and stuff like that but you can’t level a building and create a new short cut through it. Like I said decent graphics but nothing groundbreaking.

Gameplay
It was one rush or adrenaline for the first 30-40 minutes. But it got old fast. I have to admit I was loving it and wondering why everyone was giving it such a bad reputation. So you get 4 sets of guns (you have to unlock 3 sets via career mode.) You race and blow up everything in your path and you goal is to finish in 1st place. You could imagine that doing that the entire game would get old pretty fast. There are other modes like Rampage where you have to blow up so much traffic within a time limit, survival mode (last place car is booted out until 2 remain. It’s very tedious), and a few different gimmick races. Nothing to innovative and most of the modes don’t differ much from the others.

The cars handle like they would in Crazy Taxi. And each car doesn’t feel that different than the last. Also the AI is awful; you’ll be in 1st place then make one bad turn and guess what you’re in 5th or 6th place. No matter how far ahead you are half the other racers will magically appear ahead of you. Unwreck is the big draw to the game and it doesn’t save it. With the awkward diving you’ll crash and die a lot or make bad turns so unwreck and then you end up doing something worse, unwreck again and wait for it… your screwed! Enemies will cheap shot you a lot, like how about when everyone cuts ahead of you and the entire road is covered in land mines, what good is unwreck now? How about getting a missile or shotgun blast that kills you right before you hit the finish line and lose the entire race!

Bad level design is another big issue. Here’s a good example in a off road level there’s a part where you have to make a 180 turn and here’s the kicker you don’t know this until you slam into an invisible wall and stumble about until your in last place. There are impossible turns and no warning at all. The levels are also an issue for me. The big cities are the best with burning buildings and lots of traffic. But off road levels, maze levels, and other empty areas suck. There is nothing to destroy aside from your opponents.

So on to Career Mode, the only way to unlock new cars, tracks, and weapon sets. You get mostly new paint colors. It tests you skill in different circuits like tutorial, combat, pure racing (why have that in this game?), and more. So you do one race after another and get a few extras depending how well you did. As you would expect you have to win one race to play the next in the set. There are some very tedious races and sometimes it feels as if the AI is being especially cheap in these races. It’s more stressful than anything else. There is much more pressure on winning and many events where it’s 1st place or nothing.

So it’ll take about 40 minutes to an hour for this game to get 100% boring. Like I’ve said by that point you’ve seen all there is too see and done all you care to do. All the cars feel the same and all the tracks feel the same. It’s just beating a dead horse for 60 bucks and it sticks just as bad.

Controls
Smooth controls, 5 different presets that go from 4 standard racing styles to one FPS style. It’s easy to figure out if you’ve ever played a racing game. There is an issue with the right stick, some guns have an aim feature and when you driving at full speed and trying to finish in 1st it’s very distracting to maneuver the clunky cursor. All you need is to look at the controls screen and your good to go. The tutorials (mandatory) are a total waste of time. It’s just everything you already know how to do.

Audio

You have your standard car sounds, gun audio, and explosions. Nothing you haven’t heard a million times. The music is truly bland; it’s just generic techno and metal. If they at least got some licensed techno and metal it could work. Just use you custom soundtracks here. Also a big gripe about audio is on the load screens it cuts off your music so you have to go back and open the playlist every single time.

Pros

+It’s a new game on the 360!
+Blow stuff up!
+Did I say you could blow stuff up?

Cons
-No story at all
-No replay value
-Not what you'd call next-gen graphics or game play
-Nothing we haven't played before (Spy Hunter, RoadBlasters, Twisted Metal)
-Not half as destructive as promised
-It should have been a $20 budget title

Overall
Just play Spyhunter and Roadblasters as you can get the old NES cartridges for around $3 and they won't disappoint. This game just isn't that good; I think there could be potential in a sequel if they at least put some form of effort into it. If you really want to play it just rent it, it isn't worth 60 bucks for a game you'll only want to play for 40 minutes.

Game Score

4.8

Reviewed By: Contributed