Preview

We've had brilliant racing games, brilliant action games, and the occasional game that combined the two, but Full Auto™ takes this concept in a radical next-generation direction, producing a game based on vehicle carnage and straight-up racing, the net result an experience never before realized.

Rip-roaring and ready to fire.

There's a dream of gamers of everywhere that goes something like this: If I can see it and hit it, it should be destructible. Technology, though, has always stood in the way. How many times have you driven into a telephone pole and knocked it down, but then run into a mailbox farther down the street and been stopped dead in your tracks? At its most basic, that is what Full Auto attempts to cure; that worry that you're confined by the technology powering the game design. Full Auto brings its power to bear on constructing an environment that can be shredded to pieces, bit by bit.

The Premise
Imagine the most destructible environments ever created at one hundred plus miles per hour. Imagine hurtling through the streets in muscle cars, trucks, and luxury coupes equipped with rocket launchers, machine guns, rear-mounted shotguns, oil slicks, and a host of other weapons. Imagine taking giant chunks out of buildings, shattering neon billboard signs, driving through plate glass windows, and tearing through tables, chairs, light poles, telephone poles, and any other bit of obstruction that may fall in your path. This is what Full Auto offers, but those are just the barest facts.

Rubbing is racing.

First Impression
Pick up Full Auto and you're immediately struck by how much literal destruction can happen on the screen at once. Cars left, right, and center can be exploding while bits of buildings crumble, poles shatter, and signs explode in a hail of particles. With Xbox 360™ powering the way, the engine never suffers. In fact, unlike most games, the developer focused most of its attention on the sheer processing power Xbox 360 offers, not just its graphical processing unit (GPU), so it can handle all the simultaneous equations required to process the large number of destructible items.

The Gameplay
The destruction available is outstanding, but it still has to serve a purpose. The control and innovation within the gameplay has to make that destruction fun and interesting. Full Auto does just that.

The more acrobatic moves you accomplish while driving (flips, rolls, air time, etc.), the more your Boost meter is filled. Thus, the more recklessly and aggressively you drive, the more you're rewarded.

The more destruction you cause (blowing up cars, competitors, driving through a plate-glass window and shattering a building's interior, etc.), the more you fill your Unwreck meter. Your Unwreck meter allows you to turn back time after shattering your car against a brick wall or after getting hit from behind by a rocket, giving you an opportunity to avoid disaster and shave the precious seconds needed to win the race.

A glimpse of the destruction.

Quick Points
A few other elements add to the hectic and rewarding gameplay that Full Auto offers.

• Rivals: Every offline race includes at least one Rival. The standard A.I. cars are enough to worry about, but the Rivals are far more aggressive and particularly inclined to go after you. They're also very well armed. For example, coming up on the one Rival available in one of the demo races, I lined up my shot and proceed to spectacularly explode before I put my finger on the trigger. The Rival had blasted me with his rear-mounted shotguns. However, don't avoid your Rivals; they add around ten times the amount of points your standard competitors do.
• Online play: Full Auto offers split-screen and Xbox Live® play, and, while they've not ironed out how many simultaneous players the game will handle (they're shooting for eight players per race), their focus is on making it smooth (60 frames per second online) and fun. Therefore, they're not going to offer the maximum amount of players the game can technically handle, but instead the maximum amount it can handle while still being a blast.
• Out and Back mode: This is one of the different gameplay modes available, differing a bit from the standard "to the finish line" race. Out and Back starts you heading to one end, then turning and racing back from whence you started. The catch is that anything you blew or destroyed on the first leg is still obliterated on the way back, so if you've opened up new areas you can take advantage of that on the home stretch.

Full Auto is set to blow the doors open on "destruction gaming" by offering an adrenaline-filled rush of racing and destruction unlike anything we've ever seen. It's good to see developers taking full advantage of next-generation hardware, and using that hardware to alter the way we play games.

Article by Alex McLain