Slashdot Mirror
Review - Full Auto
- Title: Full Auto
- Developer: Pseudo Interactive
- Publisher: Sega
- System:360
Things start off well. The game's tutorial makes it clear from the get-go that your aim is speed, to an extent, but the real way to impress the title is by blowing stuff up. The game walks you through the various components of racing the Full Auto way. You have your boost bar, refilled by doing slides and jumps. You have your unwreck bar, which is refilled by blowing stuff up. Weapons can be mounted front and back, giving you a number of options when you're out on a course. There are several gameplay types, including basic racing, time trials, wreck point targets to hit, and qualifiers to run. There are also 'underdog' races to run, where you're outclassed by every other NPC and still have to make it to the finish line in one piece.
All of these elements somehow combine to make the most shallow and uninteresting game I've yet played on the 360. The first time you play you find dark satisfaction when a car explodes, hit by one of your hood-mounted missiles. The first time you make a mistake use unwreck, you smile in appreciation. By your third or fourth race you're settled in, driving your opponents into trucks and laying open building facades with machine guns. You're playing by rote already. You keep opening up new matches, hoping there will be new elements revealed by different race types, but you're disappointed. Within the first half hour of play, you've seen every trick this game has up its sleeve. At least it looks nice.
As a 360 game it would be hard for Full Auto to look bad, and it doesn't. Graphically, the game is solid. The textures are nice, the autos are bright and move well, and the user interface is well thought out. Even here, I don't feel entirely satisfied. With a few exceptions, the backdrop you'll be racing in is very bland. The game that Full Auto begs comparison to is Burnout, and the intricate and highly themed tracks of that game make the dingy street corridors here look quite sad. There's a jump-cam effect that gives you a cinematic view of any aerial maneuvers you perform, but when the camera returns to a first-person perspective there is a jarring sense of discontinuity; Even if your car hit the pavement in the other camera mode, you're still in the air when control is returned to you.
Most frustrating, though, is the stuttering that persists throughout the game. In heavy traffic, you can pull the trigger in rapid succession and rack up an impressive number of kills. Vehicles respond in a realistic fashion, explosions bloom, shrapnel flies, all while you speed along the track ... the system is placed under a heavy load not just occasionally but frequently in this title. Knowing that, the pausing that takes place when in a heavy combat situation is intolerable. At times there is a disquieting 'driving through butter' sensation as the action slides to a crawl. This slowdown doesn't take place during every crash or explosion, but it happens often enough to be a distraction from the only thing this game has going for it.
The most frustrating aspect of this title is the purity of the experience. The game may only do one thing, but it does that one thing fairly well. I really want to like this game. I could see myself occasionally popping into Full Auto for an online match with someone on my friends list, or trying for a new wreck point max to blow off some steam. The key is that, in this vision, the game is a $20 download from Xbox Live. The depth of this game is very similar to what I've seen from some of the better Live Arcade titles, and the simple gameplay bears a resemblance to those downloadable morsels as well. The price Sega is asking for this game is a slap in the face to anyone browsing the recent release wrack. My vision is false, and in reality this is a $60 title you have to physically drive to a store to buy. I recommend against that. If you're in the mood to blow stuff up while driving, rent this one instead. It's just not worth the money for the variety or consistency I've seen here.
Nothing beat the sheer fun of blowing other cars of the road...
No score out of 10? I'm not gonna RTFA, I need a quick verdict.
When was that game developed, 1982? How long has it been since gas has been 1.79?
Full Disappointment
"Boy. I sure like guns."
....oh wait.
"And cars. Don't forget cars."
"I know let's glue them together. It'll be innovative, engrossing...."
"Freaking brilliant!"
There's even a new use for a design element we've seen elsewhere: the application of the Prince of Persia time-rewind to the racing genre.
What's the "new use"? Oh wait, there isn't one: it's a direct ripoff. Please don't try to sugarcoat at all what is an obvious grab at existing genre money.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
designed to change gamer perceptions of Microsoft's console
And that's the problem. Instead of focusing on public perception a game designer should focus on a great gaming experience. Again it's marketing and greed driving a game instead of artists.
Developers: We can use your help.
The Xbox already has two popular racing franchises to its name. The exclusive Forza Motorsports is a powerful sim, while the multiplatform Burnout series finds its shiniest home on the Xbox.
What about Project Gotham Racing?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Until I can go down to my chain store and buy a console for MSRP or less, I could give crap less. As far I am concerned the Xbox 360 so far is a failure.
The only way to get one is to be put on a waiting list to buy a vendor bundle, where consumers are forced to pay for hardware and games they don't want. Or buy one grey market off ebay, risk getting screwed on fraud, and a gurantee screw on price.
Yeah I'm so excited.
This concept has been done before - and better - in Interstate '76. Fun game, great story, and groovy funk soundtrack. Very unfortunate that the sequel, Interstate '82, sucked.
I love slashdot. I really do. But when you start to review video games I start to question your intent. Dont get me wrong. hardware specs on the new systems are great, but when you resort to video game reviews I think it may be time to have my home page be something else.
a lot of sites review games guy, nobody does what slashdot does best. I suggest you keep playing to your strengths rather than catering to your weakness.
And I thought to myself "That's it?". Just like in Zonk's review, I was surprised by how little depth this game has.
C'mon, this is the 360! Next gen! I want a hundred tracks to race through(big ones, too, think Carmageddon or something), I want 30 unique weapons, I want 60 types of vehicles(cars, trucks, etc), and maybe some variants. how about a "defeat the big rig" a la The Road Warrior or something just to spruce things up? Crazy power ups? Power downs?
Nope, it appears to be a 187 ride-or-die like game.
So great, it's Vigilante 8, but with prettier graphics.
You can buy the game here: Full Auto for the low low price of $54.99. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
Any other oldtimers here pay AutoDuel on their Apple IIGS's way back in the day? That's what I'd expect from a game like Full Auto these days. A duel mode, a quest mode with exploration to different cities, and a really need upgrade tree that allows you to play to your own melee strengths. Mines and smokescreens for some, machine guns and flamethrowers for others.
I mean, come on. That says it all...
(What marketdroid imbecile thought that would be a good name for a company? Why not go the whole hog and call it 'Games On Rails' or 'Recycled Ideas'?)
You must think in Russian.
Forgot about Ridge Racer as well. Game is a cross between Twisted Metal and Burnout thats been watered down to the point theres barely a taste of each left. Stole the time warp from older racing games (San Francisco Rush had it if my memory is correct). I agree with the rental part tho.
...fails to do much more than explode prettily in the interested gamer's face.
Sorry, I have never really been all that excited to have anything explode prettily on my face, no matter how interested in it I was. This review, and game for that matter, gets a Brokeback Mountain award. Of course, I am a male gamer, so the female gamers out there may have a completely different view on the matter.
Yes, in case you were not paying attention, I just insulted male homosexuals and women inside of two sentences. The streak of celibacy continues!
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
I have Full Auto - I bought it the first day it came out. Every review I've read is negative. I just dont get it. Yes, full auto is Oblivion, it doesnt have hundreds of hours of single player game. But ya know what, when I get home from work, tired, maybe a little bit frustraited - its A HELL OF A LOT OF FUN TO BLOW STUFF UP.
Thats what this game is made for, its not Project Gotham, its not Oblivion - its a game about blowing stuff up. If you don't like blowing stuff up, fine - but dont call it a bad game.
snowulf.com
The really cool thing about the 360 is that you can go Live Marketplace, download the demo to this game, and try it out. If you like it, buy it. If not, don't... makes reviews less necessary when everyone can review the game themselves. I tried the demo, didn't like it that much - is fun for a few minutes but nothing I could really get into - so I didn't buy the game. Conversely, I tried the Fight Night 3 demo and never expected to like it but had a total blast - so I'm going to buy the game.
The 'shooting at other cars' part of this game isn't as fun as the 'crashing into stuff' part. That said, Burnout is a better 'crashing into stuff' racer... Project Gotham 3 is a better 'sim car' racer, and Ridge Racer or NFS are better 'drift' racers. With an uber-tuned-up version of Burnout due on the 360 next month, just wait for that.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Snuh? WTF? Why would you go through all the expense of designing, manufacturing, and marketing a console system, for the advantages of a known, discrete, and predictable hardware set, making an API to market to developers, all so that you can release games that the hardware can't keep up with? Sure, I know that on my PC, I can't run Battlefield 2 at 1600x1200 resolution with all the eye candy turned up to max with 4x antialiasing and expect to achieve a playable framerate. But some other people *can*; maybe those people want to spend extra money for dual Geforce 7800s in SLI mode. Maybe they've got their own liquid nitrogen cooling rig for their 7.2 kW power supply. There are people who can do that sort of thing, and moreover, want to do that sort of thing, so when PC games push the limits of current hardware, at least there's a market for it.
But with Xbox 360 or PS3, nobody can do that. You can't sell a new video card to 360 owners by telling them it will let them run games better. You can't sell games to 360 owners by telling them their 360 can't quite run it fast enough.
So why do such games get released? I for one know that if I'd just spent all that money on a new console, only to find that it chunks like a fudge factory on offically-licensed software, I would not be happy at all.
Who'll post the first "Does it run on Linux" comment?
The xbox 360 really has to struggle against its own features in order to have good games. The great graphics are ... well, great, but because producing them requires work, that's all work not going into things like entertainment value or playability. That's why the old Nintendo games are more fun -- they didn't necessarily spend more or less money, but the vast majority of the money was not going into modeling 3d textures or stuff like that.
stuff |
"Interstate 76" was a far better game in comparison...and just for fun...does anyone ever remember the title "Streets of Sim City"? It was also a similar kind of games with guns on your cars. You could load your built cities from Sim City 2000 into this game and race around.
dead rising is where it's at
:)
s _1.html
You, a mall, thousands of zombies, plenty of things to hit them with. No rules
I apologize for linking to ign, but the gameplay video is insanely awesome:
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/748/748396/vid
I mean, what game can you take traffic cones and stick them over the heads of zombies? Or take shower heads from a hardware store and stick them into the zombie's heads and get an instant blood shower? Or use a giant cactus to fight them with?
Another good upcoming Xbox 360 game: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (16 player online co-op). 4 player offline splitscreen.
This is the perfect example of a game relying soley on a 'gimick' and not gameplay/value. I like to blow stuff up as much as the next guy/gal (more than some), but that is the extent of interest in this game. The racing machanics are garbage and the combat doesn't hold a candle to even the original Twisted Metal on PS1.
I applaude developers for realizing that people want to blow stuff up, but we need more than that to get any lasting enjoyment from a game. The games that stand out are the ones that keep offering new challenges and escape from the tired old gameplay. Special effects [read: particle effects] and imitating hollywood-style films [read: jump cam] are only cool the first few times. After that, we have seen it and would like to move on.
I fear that the upcoming 'Outfit' game may also rely on the "blow stuff" up theme. Let's hope I'm wrong and there is some substance to it. Luckily there will be a multiplayer demo available for dl. The demo for Full Auto saved me $60.
The next generation only refers to graphics. All that extra processing power and hard drive space is only there to make the games look more fun.
They win brownie points with me by using ogg vorbis for their sound files. :)
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I played an early demo of this game that was released on a magazine CD and liked it. Stupidly I thought some of the apparent short comings were because this was a demo and purchased in on release day... ha stupid me.
What the review fails to mention is how often this damn game actually *CRASHES*. It locks the whole bloody 360 up! The screen freezes, the remote stops responding, and nothing short of pushing the power button on the 360 itself will get it back. And this is in single player campaign mode!
Interestingly the first disc I bought on release day crashed about 8 times in the course of 14 games played! I returned the game the next day and they'd only exchange it. This new disc seems much more stable - but it still crashes frequently. I asked a few people on Live and they reported similar crashing problems. So it doesn't appear to be restricted to my copy/machine.
It can be a fun game. Not my favorite, but a fun one... particularly if you play multiplayer or on Live.
But if I were Sega/Pseudo I'd never have let this thing out the door the way it is! In my opinion, given the slow downs and frequent crashes, this a Beta release not a signed-off on console game!
DON'T BUY IT... save your money for a game that's stable.
Blockwars: free, multiplayer, head to head game.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
.. is the way it features rubber banding, so no matter how far ahead you are, the enemy cars will always be snapped up to within a certain range of your position. Don't believe me? Just try watching the dots on the car radar and you'll see what I mean. As for Dead Rising, it looks good in the trailer, but what is also evident from the trailer is that the zombies don't actually seem to pay any attention till you're close enough to rub noses with them. Doesn't sound much fun at all if they're not a threat.
Conversely, when Doom 4 comes out and your new $1400 system becomes obsolete, and you need a new $250 blazing PCI-XXX videocard just to get it to run at 640x480 with a decent framerate, some dude will be playing Halo 3 on his ~$350 360, which will be optimized to the best of the developers' ability for the system. This discussion has been a non-issue for years now, dudezilla.
--- What
Full auto was billed as one of "THE GAME" to get before 360 came out. I think I saw some preview on G4 showing the game, and the developer was bragging "Yah, this is only running on 1/4 of the actual 360 hardware, when the actual game comes out, it will be totally sick!"
Sick my ass, I never trust the marketing people anyway (not even at my own company) and this is exactly the reason!
Now that was a cool game. Wish they'd bring that one back.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Why do people still expect anything more than subpar games with pretty graphics for the majority of xbox 2 games? You are fools.
The full auto demo on Xbox Live was great. Played it for a few days before getting sick of it. I think the game would have been much better as an Xbox Live arcade game for 15 bucks or so. Its fun and all, but definately not enough to last more than a couple weeks of entertainment. Also doesnt seem too interesting as a rental since every once in a while I have the urge to blow up some cars (so I'll just load up the demo).
Hopefully they'll get smart and convert it (maybe with 1/4 the levels or something) as a downloadable xbox live game
Colin Mcrae Rally 2005.
... especially a NASCAR one.
On a decent PC, nothing comes close. Most beautiful and challenging racing sim. Ever.
After playing it, I can't imagine why anyone would want to engage any other sim
NASCAR drivers see 1 turn 1000 times. Rally drivers see 1000 turns 1 time.
Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
Now that was a cool game... burning around the desert in a 1970s hotted up car with guns... fun times... the car driving model was great too, you really felt like the thing was rocking and rolling on its springs... great stuff.
A new sequel to that would be great... actually, a prequel would be excellent, 1960s cars... nice... or actually 1940s would be pretty cool too... real gangster style car chases with tommy guns.
Fuck you and your crappy games. Oblivion will rock on.
...in his inimitable 'special' style. Not as brutal or prolonged an assault on the English language as his classic Mario Kart DS review ("the gameplay is addictively fun") but some gems all the same:
"The game's tutorial makes it clear from the get-go that your aim is speed, to an extent, but the real way to impress the title is by blowing stuff up."
Why not read that back now, seeing as you obviously didn't when you wrote it, and see if you can rephrase it in intelligible English?
"As a 360 game it would be hard for Full Auto to look bad"
Someone hasn't played PDZ.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
I remember playing the orginal on one of those demo discs that come with magazines. Good fun actually, remember playing the demo a few times. Never bought the full game however as i felt I'd got everying I was going to, out of the demo... This appears to be the exact same game in a fancy new outfit.
AUSG4 said "... makes reviews less necessary when everyone can review the game themselves."
Unless, of course, you don't own a 360 and are waiting for a good reason to buy one.
Unless, of course, there is truly nothing more to the game than what the demo holds.
I'm old fashioned, I guess, but I like reviews but it gives me a different perspective on things. It also gives me some insight into how well the game will sell and as someone who plays almost exclusively Live with friends, that is critical. If it is perceived to be lame and no one buys it but me, it will be lame to me as I will have no one to play.
Your logic is that publishers have no interest in promoting a platform? What do you think the games get played on?
The competitor's platform. This could be Xbox 360 vs. PS3 (joypad/fixed), or it could be Revolution vs. Windows Vista (mouse/fixed), or it could be Nintendo DS vs. PSP (joypad/mobile), or it could be Nintendo DS vs. Windows Mobile (touch screen/mobile). Heck, it's even current gen vs. next gen, especially on Windows where the generation curve is continuous rather than stepwise. Only publishers partly or wholly owned by a platform maker (e.g. Micraresoft) have a vested interest in a specific platform's success.
Check out the Xbox 360 Inventory Tool to check your local Best Buy, Circuit City, or Future Shop (in Canada) for an Xbox 360 Premium system.
The blog says that the tool requires the .NET Framework 2.0. I have a feeling that the .NET Framework 2.0 in turn requires Microsoft Windows, as it probably introduces a load of APIs that Mono does not know of. A lot of people on Slashdot suggest that people who complain about the lack of games on minority personal computing platforms such as Mac OS X or Ubuntu Linux should use a video game console. So how does one locate a video game console while using a minority personal computing platform?
if it costs half a days pay (if you are paid decently (after taxes))
Though I have a degree, there are few to no IT job postings in my hometown that take recent graduates. Most want somebody with experience (code word for somebody who was laid off during the dot-com crash or during the outsourcing boom). I send my cover letter and resume and get 0 responses. I can't save up the money to move to another state because even fast food doesn't want to hire me, possibly because of some unstated conclusion that I am overqualified. How can I become paid, let alone paid decently, so that I can afford to buy an Xbox 360 and this game?
Besides, most people don't have an Xbox 360 and can't afford to buy it at an inflated price on eBay, especially for "half a day's pay".
Live Marketplace ... makes reviews less necessary when everyone can review the game themselves.
Not necessarily. I know a lot of families who aren't willing to upgrade from $120/yr dial-up Internet access to $480/yr high-speed Internet access just to download video game demos, especially if such an upgrade involves moving house. Does anybody have sales figures comparing the PS2 and original Xbox in geographic areas with broadband and in areas without?
I returned the game the next day and they'd only exchange it. This new disc seems much more stable - but it still crashes frequently.
Have you tried exchanging every defective disc when you happen to be in that part of town? Perhaps if the title's reported defect rate at a given store approaches the game's actual defect rate (100% if what you say is true), management might consider offering you an exchange for a different title.
RE: enjoying blowing stuff up
The environment itself is static, to the extent that you can't blow up buildings and other hardware, but when it comes to cars Burnout:Revenge is awsome in my opinion. I've had the game for a month or so, and I think I'm almost 70% done. I can't really speak to 'racing mechanics' but I can tell different cars by the way the 'feel' when I excellerate/corner in them, if that's what you mean. There aren't any cars in Burnout that I can compare to real-world cars.
The single-box multi-player (I don't subscribe to Live) is pretty good. Most driving modes are represented and I think it's done fairly well, but I'd like to see, well, more. Like perhaps a co-operative mode.
I'd highly recomend this game.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To add to what tepples said, is there more than one version of the game being sold? If, for example, your first purchase (on release day) was version 1.0, did the version that you exchanged the disc for have a later version, like 1.2?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Awesome game.
And was the biggest Best Game / Worst Sequel around until Deus Ex / Deus Ex Invisible War.
Pardon the flame-bait, but why is this on the frontpage? This is a name-less game; if it was a Halo or a GTA I could understand, so why exactly is this on the frontpage? Once more, why is this on the frontpage? Because Zonk wrote it? Once again, why oh why?
yer blog link is dead, dude
I love "Mashed" for frenetic, arcade, car destoying action. Cheap too AU$50 full price :-). Prob get it for half that at EB
My fav feature is the "air strike" in multplayer mode where you can seek revenge for your downfall mwhaa ha ha ha.
Another great thing is that you can pick it up for just 10 mins at a time have a few races then get on with somthing else (I'm a gaming dad BTW)
people still have dial-up?
Yes.
the people who are adopting -now- are the kind of people who generally have broadband
But later on, once people who had continued playing current-gen consoles have been forced to migrate to the Xbox 360 due to a lack of new releases for current-gen consoles, will the Xbox 360 have any significant advantage over the PS3 in geographic areas where no ISP offers affordable high-speed Internet access to residential customers?
I think you're expecting too much from these slashvertisements