Full Auto

"<3 Explosions"

I love explosions. Explosions are one of the best things to come out of the 80s. Screw the big hair bands; give me the explosions of Rambo and Predator and I'm satisfied. And that my friend is what Full Auto gives us. Explosions abound in Full Auto. It's the whole point of the game. You strap yourself into the seat of some generic vehicle that's completely strapped with guns and mines and grenades and all sorts of other weapons, and then you take to streets and blow the hell out of anything that gets in your way. Sometimes it'll be a rival racer that gets in your way, but if he does, you can unload a stream of bullets into his bumper and completely obliterate him. Other times, you'll be forced to contend with regular city traffic, mostly comprised of soccer moms taking their kids to school and business men going to the office for another grueling day of accounting. Try your best to forget about their lives and shoot rockets at them.

Occasionally, pesky buildings will get in your way. You can shoot them up too, and when your rocket slams into that window and debris goes flying everywhere, you'll know you did your job well. To keep you entertained for longer, there are a variety of challenges in Full Auto based around the idea of blowing everything up. You might have to blow up a certain car, or damage a certain amount of property (measured in dollars of damage), or blow up a set number of innocent, non-racing vehicles. Make no mistakes in understanding me: this game is all about explosions. There aren't cops to stop you from making things go boom, and your rival racers usually don't stand in your way of blowing things up either. If your rivals do happen to get the better of you, the game comes with an interesting and useful time-control feature that allows you to rewind the race, which can help you get back into the lead after crucial mistakes.

And as Porky Pig might say “That's all, folks!” There's not much to this game outside of explosions. It doesn't explore any new ground, and after playing it, you'll be left with the taste of Burnout and Twisted Metal in your mouth. The only thing that feel new in this game are the graphics. The game is really shiny. The cars reflect the environment and debris flies in nearly every direction. The game is marred by some unfortunate slowdown when the explosions get really big, but the impressive distance draw nearly negates that problem. And the explosions, well, they look fantastic. Big flames shooting out at every angle of a car or a building just doesn't get old. All the explosions can certainly get old after playing Full Auto for more than twenty minutes at a time, but during those first twenty minutes you're going to find it mighty sweet.

This is the bottom-line: Full Auto really doesn't deliver a next-generation experience. It's a shallow game. It's got as much depth as one of those kiddy pools you can pick up at Walmart for five bucks, but at the same time, submerging yourself as much as you can in that little pool is mighty nice on those hot summer days. This is definitely the type of game that you'll want to pick up if you've got a couple of buddies that are sitting around with you bored looking for something to do. I wouldn't suggest paying the full retail price for it or anything, but Full Auto is worth checking out as a rental.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/06