"A so-so game but I did find the on-line portion to be fun."

Full Auto is my 5th or so 360 title. Not sure why I rented this, I guess I wanted a racing game but to be honest this isn't a true racing game. You need to look at it as a racing game meets Twisted Metal. The game received not so good reviews from the critics and while I didn't find this a must own title, it isn't as bad as some of the reviews made it out to be.

Graphically Full Auto is average. A friend stopped over and she had never seen the 360 in action and I was playing this game. First thing out of her mouth was "What's so different about this, it looks like your other games". Granted, this game isn't exactly next gen with realism but it's the destruction factor and how many interactive items are on the screen at once. It's amazing to see so much action happen at once and it does look good. The problem is that the frame rate comes to a stuttering halt at times and I even had the game lock up on me a couple different times.

Sound wise I wasn't thrilled. The music felt generic and just not exciting. The sound effects, while doing what they should, do sound a bit too arcade like. One of my friends complained that it sounded like the entertainment room had become an arcade, this from someone who usually loves the audio in most of the games I play. It's not really but it isn't anything thrilling either.

I found the control to be set up perfectly and very easy to get the hang of. A is your front weapon; B is your rear weapon. Left stick drives your vehicle; right stick can aim some of your weapons. Left trigger is brake, right trigger is gas. Left nub is turbo and right nub is a rewind feature. Very simple and it worked well for me. No complaints here. Besides learning the control though, the cars don't feel a tad bit too floaty and it took me a while to get the hang of it. It does play more like an arcade game than a true racer or vehicle combat title.

Now onto the game play. The game has a story mode of sorts, just minus a story. There is about 15 or so sets of courses. So there is a good bit here to mess with and as you advance in the game more of those 15 become unlocked. I think I had four or so unlocked after doing the training. Aside from that the game offers multiplayer features.

The actual game feels like Burnout meets Twisted Metal. You always need to get in the top 3 spots to advance unless it's a knock out round. To be honest the game types don't vary past that. Third place is just getting third but to get a first or second place metal you need to get in that place and score a certain score. You score by destroying stuff. Be it trees, on coming traffic, your enemies, or buildings. Just blow everything up. After a few races I found myself with 500,000 scores. It's really easy to rack the scores up.

The game has a good amount of cars and weapons. Advance in the game to get better cars and weapons, change the color and all of that. I found the actual track selection to be a bit lacking and the off-road stages are the ones I really hated. Some tracks are really long while others are under a minute per lap. It feel more like Ridge Racer than other racing games, meaning the city works as a track and sections are split up for you to drive on. So while you have different tracks, they all kind of look and feel the same.

Replay value is kind of low in this game. Takes about 5 hours if that to finish all of the races, not hard at all. It just doesn't have a whole lot of variety to it and I will admit I found it kind of dull after 30 minutes or so. This is my first experience with Xbox Live and it wasn't a good one. I found that I could barely hear anyone who was using a headphone but maybe it would be different if I had plugged mine in. Game play was kind of smooth but still laggy at points. There are no lobbies; it just randomly throws you into a game. I found myself ending up in the same person's game over and over. Oh and I'm terrible online. Online just feels like it was tossed in at the last minute. That being said I did have some mild fun with it and after trying some of these other LIVE enabled games I must say this was one of the easier ones to get around in.

Sega seems to be on a loosing streak so far with the 360. Nothing that is A+ and just average games that have many technical issues. The game did crash on me once, which is really annoying and I don't think I've ever played a console so prone to crashing. Would I recommend this? Well, I really don't know. A part of me wants to buy this for my collection and it is only $20. The problems comes in that I know that after a few races I get bored so it doesn't have a whole lot of lasting appeal to me either. A fine rental and if you like what you play during that rental then buy it since it's a cheaper game but you should be able to beat the game with ease.

Story - N/A
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 6/10
Control - 7/10
Game Play - 6/10
Replay Value - 5/10

Final Score - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/06