In0x’s Reviews

Full Auto -   X-Box 360                          Feb. 06

     I’m willing to overlook a lot of things if a game is fun. Full Auto is a game with a lot of issues that would normally put me off but the core gameplay is so cool that I did overlook all of those issues and managed to enjoy the game very much anyway. Pseudo Interactive did a very good job of taking some of the best aspects of driving games and shooting games and combining them to make something that is more than the sum of its parts.

     A lot of the things that make this game fun are blatant rip-offs of the Burnout series but I can live with that because they took the best parts of those games and they got them right. The courses look eerily familiar if you’ve played Burnout, the cars look similar except for the weapons bolted on to them, the way the camera switches to cinematic slow motion when you wipe out and even the sound queue that you get when you wreck someone else’s car are the same.   

     By adding weapons to the cars they’ve taken road rage to a whole new level. If you’ve ever been frustrated by the feeling you get when you know the finish line is just over the next hill but you can’t find a way to pass the guy in front of you then you can imagine how satisfying it is to put a rocket up his tailpipe and hurtle through the fireball of wreckage that was his car. It’s a giggly kind of fun that just never gets old. If you’re having trouble getting that tailgater off your bumper you can drop a mine or some grenades in his path and watch the fireworks from your rearview mirror. Some of the other weapon loadouts include twin 50 cal. machine guns for shredding the cars ahead of you and a smoke screen to cause chaos on the road behind.

     Graphically the game is definitely firing on all pistons. This eye candy is sweet enough to give you cavities and no matter how much is going on the frame rate never skips a beat. Sound effects are equally impressive, crank up the resolution and the volume and you won’t be disappointed.

     Online multiplayer is where Full Auto really shines. The competition is fierce, the combat is sick fun and lag is rarely an issue. Even when you loose, you still have fun. Of all the X-Box 360 games I’ve played online I have to say this one is the best. Standard leader boards keep track of your ranking and you can level up ala Halo II to make sure you get matched with players of a similar skill level.

     As far as the issues I mentioned, the driving doesn’t feel as fast as some other racing games but its still a blast and since speed is not always the key to winning it never becomes a problem. The targeting is a little spotty so there is a bit of luck involved. If you wipe out or you’re just not satisfied with how you handled a section of course the game has a feature called “unwreck” which you can use to rewind the game a little and try again. The cars are a little floaty, they feel like the tires are always a few inches off the road and I got the impression that they made it that way on purpose so no matter how good you are you will crash once in a while anyway and be forced to use the unwreck. The soundtrack lists a lot of songs but they’re all so generic that you can’t tell one from another.

     Overall I have to say that I had a lot of fun playing Full Auto and if you’re looking for a racer with a little something extra in the tank then don’t miss this one.

I gave Full Auto an 8.5

In0x            NYC