Full Auto from Sega and Pseudo Interactive was supposed to have been a launch title for the 360 back in November. For one reason or another though, Sega decided to delay the game. Now in mid February, Full auto has finally hit the store shelves.
 
The game borrows elements from both Burnout and Twisted Metal and blends them together pretty well. You get to drive recklessly in many different vehicles, but you also get to arm those vehicles to the teeth to obliterate your opposition. You can even take out much of the scenery in Full Auto's world with your various assortment of weapons. You start the game with a very basic set of weapons, a front mounted machine gun and a rear mounted mine dispenser. As you progress through the game, you'll earn better weapons, like grenades, shotguns, rockets, and the like. Some weapons are static and fire either in front or behind you, and some can be aimed using the right thumb stick. The ability to aim is a nice touch, but doing so while trying to negotiate a sharp turn can be a handful. The game handles well overall, though, and even the additional weapon aiming can be learned with a little practice.
 
As you slide your car around corners and narrowly avoid traffic you'll fill up a boost meter. Once it's full you can engage a momentary speed burst. We've seen this before. What Full Auto does a bit differently though is its Unwreck feature. If you mess up and crash, you can rewind time a few seconds to give yourself a do-over. When you're first starting out, this is a nice feature, but as you get more familiar with the tracks, you'll find that you're using it more to make up for the game's sometimes bizarre physics. Hitting a lip or other slanted edge can send your car into a chaotic tumble which will definitely cost you a few positions.
 
The main mode in Full Auto is the Career Mode. Here you'll take on many different race series, with several events in each. There's your typical circuit, point to point, and Lap Knockout races similar to what other games offer. The only difference being that most of the time it's not only about finishing first, but about how much points you can earn by blowing up opponents or parts of the scenery. Full Auto also has a couple of other, more unconventional race types. The Down And Back races have you racing as fast as you can to a specific point in the world, then turning around and racing all the way back to the start. There's also a Rampage mode, which pits you against the traffic. You'll have to take out as many traffic cars as you can, as well as finish within a certain amount of time. This is not unlike Burnout Revenge's Traffic Attack mode, only with more explosions. The game tries to keep things lively by giving you different conditions for victory, but for the most part, it boils down to just placing first and doing as much damage as you can along the way. The Career Mode isn't all that long. It should take between five and six hours to get through all of the races. The game wears tin long before that though. After about two hours, the game starts to feel like the same old thing over and over again.
 
Along with the Career mode, Full Auto also has an Arcade Mode, which lets you quickly jump into a race using any of the cars and weapons that you've unlocked in Career Mode. If you have a friend nearby, you have the option to also play the game via split-screen on the same Xbox 360. This can be pretty fun, although the game's frame rate takes a noticeable hit. There is also Online racing for up to eight players. All the basic race types are present and accounted for here. You're not able to use Unwreck in any of the multiplayer modes, so the game dilutes itself into a very standard, combat oriented racer.
 
On the whole, Full auto is a good looking game. The tracks you'll race through have a nice amount of details in them, like destructible obstacles and buildings. The car models also look quite detailed. There are no licensed cars in Full Auto, but the cars in the game do bear a striking resemblance to cars that you may be familiar with. What's better, the damage is really well done. Glass will shatter, doors will hang on their hinges, bumpers will dangle precariously. It all looks quite good. Where the game has problems is when it starts to throw around smoke, fire, and particle effects. Though they look great, the game will slow down tremendously. It's enough to make your head hurt if you play for too long.
 
Full Auto's audio isn't all that bad. The music is of the electronic variety with emphasis on catchy beats. It's not for everyone though, but the Xbox 360 lets you change the music to suit your tastes. This is a handy feature of the 360, and would be even more useful if Full Auto didn't have a glitch which reset the music source to the game's default soundtrack. If you want to use your own music, you have to choose it in the beginning of each and every race. It's really quite annoying, and something that will hopefully be fixed in an auto-update. The game's sound effects on the other hand are well done. There's many different road surface sounds, many different engine notes for the various cars, all of which lend the game some ambiance. The weapon sound effects and explosions are powerful sounding, as you'd expect them to be.
 
Full Auto is a game that had potential. It has a good idea at its core, but that idea alone doesn't make for the most long lasting of games. The objectives get repetitive after about two hours of play, and that's when tedium starts to set in. The unsteady framerate and soundtrack bug don't help matters much either. What Full Auto ends up being is a game that's best played in short bursts. It might not be worth the 60$ purchase, but it's definitely worth a rental.