Full Auto Xbox 360 Review

Let’s talk destruction, and we mean masses and masses of destruction. You see Full Auto is that superb car chase sequence with all those explosions that you’ve seen in a recent movie, the scene where a city street becomes demolished and with it comes the hope that all those shattered buildings have been insured. Full Auto’s weapons (missiles, machine guns, cannons etc) are a joy to use as not only do they turn your opponents vehicles into fiery death-traps, a stray missile is also enough to knock slabs of concrete out of a building wall, obviously leaving it with a big gaping hole. Then there’s the scaffolding, which collapses, electricity cables drop, sparks shower, water gushes, lots of things explode – and during all of this you may very well be smiling even if you keep finishing bottom in the current race. The experience is sometimes hit by framerate issues, which can be pretty severe at times, although thankfully this is a rare sight.

Full Auto has a pretty sizeable career mode, which consists of 16 series’ (each presenting three to twelve races) further bolstered by a large amount of generosity in the array of race events. Completing the mode may not be a particularly challenging ordeal, although scooping up all the gold medals most certainly is, therefore we recommend you to aim that little bit higher to get the most out of this mode, perhaps forgetting about those bronze and silver medals and going for gold instead.

As you can imagine, racing on Full Auto is a pretty intense ride. You are regularly given the opportunity to select your weaponry (front and rear!) before a race, allowing you to play to your preference. A front mounted shotgun goes nicely with rear grenades, and so on. There’s a nice selection of weapons, but we do feel that there could have been something a little more outlandish to counteract the unimaginative.

It may be pretty brainless at times, but there is some strategic elements in here. Your car has side, front and rear armour, which can be individually taken apart by your opponents weaponry, thus teaching you to be cautious and to keep damaged portions of your car out of harms way. A boost of speed comes available by performing jumps and powerslides, and then there’s the Unwreck that just so happens to be a tool that is as instrumental to your success as any fitted rockets or shotguns.

Much like Squadra Corse Alfa Romeo, Full Auto gifts you with the ability to rewind time. If you find yourself in a fiery wreckage a tap of the RB button is able to instantly return you to the track, thus possibly retaining your race position in the process and having another chance to avoid that mine that you didn’t see until it was too late . Unlike SCAR rewinding time actually works here, and the most simple of mistakes can be rectified, so long as you have enough rewind time left on your Unwreck meter. It plays such a key part that you’ll feel completely lost without it when the game deactivates it for a certain event or you are racing online. It’s not perfect though, as filling the meter up is simply a case of blasting the environments and your opponents, a contribution to making things that little bit too easy, but thankfully never below anything but enjoyable.

An online mode bumps our overall score up to a rather nice eight. When playing against a full field of human opponents, it’s as hotly intense as the game gets. Rarely have we seen any lag to complain about, and with this said it’s definitely one of the finest online experiences thus far on the 360. A very servicable split-screen option is also available, but it doesn’t quite match up to the online experience. So if you haven’t got Live take a point off our overall score, and think twice before purchasing.

8/10

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *