Full Auto
Posted February 27, 2006
Released by Sega, Full Auto ended a lengthy drought of new content for the Xbox 360. This high speed, destruction laden racer brings arcade vehicular battle to the forefront and captures some elements that made Twisted Metal such a popular series. While it lacks certain aspects of personality, stability, and single player length, Full Auto somewhat makes up for its shortcomings with an incredibly satisfying online mode and a challenging set of achievements.
As the game loads up, the Full Auto logo appears and some electronic rock music cranks up. Sega spent little time on creating an impressive presentation. Besides a sample race that loads if the controls are left untouched, the presentation is nothing more than the utilitarian menu system. The menu design is easy to use, but lacks the impressive background motion of Project Gotham. Another detrimental quality to the menu system is lengthy load times post-race when returning to the menu. I can understand waiting for a new track to load up, but having to wait even longer for the simplistic menu to reappear is disappointing.
Gameplay:
The menu breaks down into five categories: player to player, arcade, leaderboard, career and Xbox Live. The player to player mode pits you against a friend and up to six computer controller players in split screen mode. The arcade mode is made up of five separate types of races which can be used to hone your skills for the career mode. The leaderboard tracks stats from all of the game modes and complies the numbers for achievement purposes along with personal comparisons.
The career mode is made up of eighty seven challenges designed to introduce the different types of cars available and teach how to use the weaponry effectively. These challenges are broken up into separate campaigns, many of which are locked at the outset of the career. As you progress through the campaigns, rewards for completing the challenges include new weaponry, new car colors/skins, and the ability to fine tune your weapons. Fine tuning is nothing more than increasing the forceful impact of one weapon in exchange for weakening your secondary weapon, but it's certainly a welcome necessity for the later levels. It's recommended that you complete the career mode before venturing online, so you can have access to the complete selection of automobiles and tuning capabilities.
The online mode is perhaps the most praiseworthy aspect of Full Auto. Taking out the stiff competition with your guns blazing is addictively satisfying. When setting up a match, you can choose from the same track selection and game types that are found in the career mode. In addition, the online mode offers an option to send racers in the opposite direction of each other. Attempting to shoot an oncoming car requires the utmost skill and precision. Out of the countless matches I played, the vast majority were lag free. If someone is on a bad connection, they will appear to jump forward and back due to the lag, but it won't hamper the speed of your car. If you don't want to host the match, you can browse through all of the available matches via the custom search mode. On a minor negative note, the displayed number of players in each game lobby never keeps up with the actual number of players in the lobby. It can be annoying to find an open match during the busy hours as they fill up quickly.
Winning in the online arena will take a good bit of practice against the single player AI to get the hang of the game mechanics. The artificial intelligence is fairly competent when dishing out destruction, but makes numerous driving mistakes on all levels of difficulty. The developer compensated for the sub par driving skill by allowing for the rubber band effect. It doesn't matter how many cars are destroyed as the entire pack will always catch up. Also, the AI on the docks level will occasionally go into a glitched mode of spinning donuts while you finish the race. If the AI does manage to take out your four-wheeled weapon of destruction, the unwreck feature can be used to fix your last mistake.
If you haven't heard about the unwreck feature, it's basically a rewind feature that will take back a few seconds of the race. You can start and stop the feature at any time as long as the unwreck meter is filled up. You can fill up the meter by causing mayhem. This feature contributes heavily to finishing tough races in the late stages of the career mode. It cannot be used in the online arena though. There is also a nearly useless replay feature that will present the most recent acts of destruction, but the replay cannot be saved to the hard drive.
Mastering the controls will defeat the need for unwreck for the most part. Sadly, the layout of the control scheme is difficult to handle dependent on the weapons used. Some of the weapons have a manual aiming system that uses the right thumbstick. The problem lies in using your right thumb for firing the two weapons as well. The learning curve is far too high, so an auto aim option should have been included. Instead, try to opt for the weapons that don't require aiming such as the machine gun.
The fifty achievements for 1000 points are split about 90/10 percent between single player/multiplayer. While the majority of the points will be gained during the career mode, many of the tougher challenges provide some serious self-worth to those achievement points. For instance, the "Get all Full Auto Medals" achievement is definitely a controller breaking one due to continual frustration with the final few medals. Sega did an excellent job setting up a group of achievements that are not impossible to attain, yet still challenging.
Graphics:
Visually, Full Auto is highly impressive at first glance. The shiny car models are expertly detailed and the environments are thoroughly bumpmapped pre-destruction. The particle explosions within the race track are also amazingly accurate, especially when your vehicle slowly begins to rip apart. Watching a gas station ignite in an enormous ball of flames and send surrounding cars hurtling in all directions is certainly a sight to behold.
Sadly, these visual elements in standard high definition are hampered by horrible frame rate issues that occur repeatedly on certain sections of the tracks. For instance, smoke effects will drop the game to a dismal frame rate, mostly if action is occurring while you pass through. The smoke effects are fairly ugly to begin with, which puzzles me after seeing how beautiful smoke can be in Call of Duty 2. When the frame rate drops, mistakes are more likely to be made due to overcompensation on the controls. The programmers of Full Auto attempted too many on-screen action elements at the expense of actual playability.
Audio:
The sound effects are typical of their particular cars and the mounted weaponry. My favorite sound has to be my level three machine guns turning the car ahead of me into Swiss cheese. I found the music to be highly forgettable and the amount of tracks is far too low for a racing title. In addition, the genre of music never changes, so you better like electronica rock and metal. The custom soundtracks can be used within a race, but you have to reload your music after every loading screen. It's barely worth the effort. On a minor side note, I found the default overall volume to be unusually high for an Xbox 360 title. It's easily fixable, but slightly annoying when switching between games.
Conclusion:
Sega created an action filled racing game that's on the shallow side and filled with a variety of flaws. They did manage to create an excellent online section for the game, but that's more attributed to the contrast of racing actual people rather than the mediocre AI. Full Auto can be enjoyable if you want to look past the flaws, but the multiplayer alone doesn't warrant a purchase at the retail price. Going through the single player career mode will take around 6 to 8 hours to finish and you can add another few hours to acquire all the Full Auto medals. It is worth a rent to complete the single player career and test out the online mode.
As the game loads up, the Full Auto logo appears and some electronic rock music cranks up. Sega spent little time on creating an impressive presentation. Besides a sample race that loads if the controls are left untouched, the presentation is nothing more than the utilitarian menu system. The menu design is easy to use, but lacks the impressive background motion of Project Gotham. Another detrimental quality to the menu system is lengthy load times post-race when returning to the menu. I can understand waiting for a new track to load up, but having to wait even longer for the simplistic menu to reappear is disappointing.
Gameplay:
The menu breaks down into five categories: player to player, arcade, leaderboard, career and Xbox Live. The player to player mode pits you against a friend and up to six computer controller players in split screen mode. The arcade mode is made up of five separate types of races which can be used to hone your skills for the career mode. The leaderboard tracks stats from all of the game modes and complies the numbers for achievement purposes along with personal comparisons.
The career mode is made up of eighty seven challenges designed to introduce the different types of cars available and teach how to use the weaponry effectively. These challenges are broken up into separate campaigns, many of which are locked at the outset of the career. As you progress through the campaigns, rewards for completing the challenges include new weaponry, new car colors/skins, and the ability to fine tune your weapons. Fine tuning is nothing more than increasing the forceful impact of one weapon in exchange for weakening your secondary weapon, but it's certainly a welcome necessity for the later levels. It's recommended that you complete the career mode before venturing online, so you can have access to the complete selection of automobiles and tuning capabilities.
The online mode is perhaps the most praiseworthy aspect of Full Auto. Taking out the stiff competition with your guns blazing is addictively satisfying. When setting up a match, you can choose from the same track selection and game types that are found in the career mode. In addition, the online mode offers an option to send racers in the opposite direction of each other. Attempting to shoot an oncoming car requires the utmost skill and precision. Out of the countless matches I played, the vast majority were lag free. If someone is on a bad connection, they will appear to jump forward and back due to the lag, but it won't hamper the speed of your car. If you don't want to host the match, you can browse through all of the available matches via the custom search mode. On a minor negative note, the displayed number of players in each game lobby never keeps up with the actual number of players in the lobby. It can be annoying to find an open match during the busy hours as they fill up quickly.
Winning in the online arena will take a good bit of practice against the single player AI to get the hang of the game mechanics. The artificial intelligence is fairly competent when dishing out destruction, but makes numerous driving mistakes on all levels of difficulty. The developer compensated for the sub par driving skill by allowing for the rubber band effect. It doesn't matter how many cars are destroyed as the entire pack will always catch up. Also, the AI on the docks level will occasionally go into a glitched mode of spinning donuts while you finish the race. If the AI does manage to take out your four-wheeled weapon of destruction, the unwreck feature can be used to fix your last mistake.
If you haven't heard about the unwreck feature, it's basically a rewind feature that will take back a few seconds of the race. You can start and stop the feature at any time as long as the unwreck meter is filled up. You can fill up the meter by causing mayhem. This feature contributes heavily to finishing tough races in the late stages of the career mode. It cannot be used in the online arena though. There is also a nearly useless replay feature that will present the most recent acts of destruction, but the replay cannot be saved to the hard drive.
Mastering the controls will defeat the need for unwreck for the most part. Sadly, the layout of the control scheme is difficult to handle dependent on the weapons used. Some of the weapons have a manual aiming system that uses the right thumbstick. The problem lies in using your right thumb for firing the two weapons as well. The learning curve is far too high, so an auto aim option should have been included. Instead, try to opt for the weapons that don't require aiming such as the machine gun.
The fifty achievements for 1000 points are split about 90/10 percent between single player/multiplayer. While the majority of the points will be gained during the career mode, many of the tougher challenges provide some serious self-worth to those achievement points. For instance, the "Get all Full Auto Medals" achievement is definitely a controller breaking one due to continual frustration with the final few medals. Sega did an excellent job setting up a group of achievements that are not impossible to attain, yet still challenging.
Graphics:
Visually, Full Auto is highly impressive at first glance. The shiny car models are expertly detailed and the environments are thoroughly bumpmapped pre-destruction. The particle explosions within the race track are also amazingly accurate, especially when your vehicle slowly begins to rip apart. Watching a gas station ignite in an enormous ball of flames and send surrounding cars hurtling in all directions is certainly a sight to behold.
Sadly, these visual elements in standard high definition are hampered by horrible frame rate issues that occur repeatedly on certain sections of the tracks. For instance, smoke effects will drop the game to a dismal frame rate, mostly if action is occurring while you pass through. The smoke effects are fairly ugly to begin with, which puzzles me after seeing how beautiful smoke can be in Call of Duty 2. When the frame rate drops, mistakes are more likely to be made due to overcompensation on the controls. The programmers of Full Auto attempted too many on-screen action elements at the expense of actual playability.
Audio:
The sound effects are typical of their particular cars and the mounted weaponry. My favorite sound has to be my level three machine guns turning the car ahead of me into Swiss cheese. I found the music to be highly forgettable and the amount of tracks is far too low for a racing title. In addition, the genre of music never changes, so you better like electronica rock and metal. The custom soundtracks can be used within a race, but you have to reload your music after every loading screen. It's barely worth the effort. On a minor side note, I found the default overall volume to be unusually high for an Xbox 360 title. It's easily fixable, but slightly annoying when switching between games.
Conclusion:
Sega created an action filled racing game that's on the shallow side and filled with a variety of flaws. They did manage to create an excellent online section for the game, but that's more attributed to the contrast of racing actual people rather than the mediocre AI. Full Auto can be enjoyable if you want to look past the flaws, but the multiplayer alone doesn't warrant a purchase at the retail price. Going through the single player career mode will take around 6 to 8 hours to finish and you can add another few hours to acquire all the Full Auto medals. It is worth a rent to complete the single player career and test out the online mode.