Racing games are sure-fire sellers when it comes to the world of console videogames, as are the tried-and-true shooters. Consequently, companies come along from time to time trying to combine the two, but to date, only the Twisted Metal series has really done the racing-shooter “genre” justice. Pseudo Interactive and Sega hope to change all that with their Xbox 360 launch title Full Auto.
Full Auto takes the best of the racing genre, namely pedal-to-the-metal urban racing, and combines it with the best the shooter genre has to offer, most notably big explosions. If you can imagine the wildly popular Burnout 3, then envision fully automatic weapons on top of each car that blast apart opponents and the destructible environments, you have an idea of where Full Auto is headed. But it’s not until you understand the magic of the game’s “unwreck” feature that you can truly appreciate what the game is doing with the next-generation Xbox 360 hardware.
Before you start claiming the screenshots accompanying this preview are renders, let us be the first to assure you they’re both in-engine and in real-time. Oh, and it only took Pseudo Interactive eight months to get them looking this good. Well, in a way. At E3 2004, Microsoft demonstrated a car-crash sequence to show developers the power of their so-called XNA development tools. Pseudo Interactive was the company responsible for that demonstration, and Full Auto grew out of that technical demo. As a result, while Full Auto itself has only been in development eight months, the engine that powers it has had more than a year of polishing.
The engine is good for more than eye candy, though, with Full Auto featuring completely destructible environments and an astounding physics system. Every stray bullet, every errant missile, every mistimed jump that nicks the corner of a building has a persistent impact on the world surrounding the race. Like Project Gotham Racing, Full Auto features arrow guides to usher players through each race, but if a corner café is in the way, players can feel free to crash through its lobby and make a shortcut that gives new meaning to the term “drive through.”
In this sense, the racing in Full Auto is reminiscent of Wreckless, only much more enjoyable and less dependent upon knowing the exact lay of the land. In fact, Full Auto essentially rewards players for not knowing the tracks, as shortcuts abound for those who feel “lost” or for those who want to experiment with the physics by racing through a tunnel or testing out an improvisational jump.
When the shortcuts go awry, or when players find themselves the victim of enemy fire, the armor on each car will wear down, eventually leading to the car’s explosion. Before that happens, players need only hit the right shoulder button to “unwreck” themselves and change the outcome. This function is essentially identical to the Prince of Persia’s time-rewinding capability, and the duration of each unwreck instance is controlled by the length of time players hold down the shoulder button.
Players gradually rebuild their unwreck meter by dealing more destruction, so in most races, there’s plenty of unwrecking to be had. What’s more, although unwreck is most useful for cheating death, it can also be used to retry the perfect jump or retime a turn to explore a new shortcut, because even the smallest change in direction or acceleration will result in a changed trajectory. Yes, the physics are that detailed.
Jumps and environmental obstacles can also be altered by weapons fire, as evidenced by one race we saw in which a front-mounted missile blew up a bridge, which derailed train, which fell on an enemy, which blew up a gas station, which created a ramp by which to jump over the mayhem. Not only did this look completely incredible, but it was all performed in real-time and in-game, and with a simple unwreck and re-aiming of the missile, the entire sequence never took place on the second go-through.
While this explosive scenario was the result of front-mounted missiles, Full Auto also features rear-mounted weapons such as shotguns and oil drums (hello, Spy Hunter). In total, Full Auto includes 10 weapon types, each of which has three levels of destruction and is handled differently by different cars. Needless to say, a heavy missile launcher isn’t necessarily the most intelligent choice for weaponry when it comes to a lightweight car, no matter how enticing the opportunity to do splash damage with each missile’s explosion.
As much as players will be drawn to the explosions, Full Auto is ultimately about racing. The city in Full Auto is divided into three 16-square-kilometer districts, Entertainment, Garment and Industrial, and the various paths in each comprise the game’s “levels.” To advance to the next race, players must finish in third place or higher, and to unlock even more items, they must achieve certain levels of destruction. Essentially, it’s a combination of the Crash and Race modes in Burnout 3. But Full Auto takes every mode we’ve come to love and jacks them up on next-gen steroids.
With its appearance on Xbox 360, Full Auto will completely utilize Xbox Live. For starters, the game will support races for up to eight players, all of whom will be able to take part in point-to-point, circuit and there-and-back competitions (additional race modes may be added between now and November). It will also support saved replays that can be shared with friends online, which will surely be a popular feature for those who likes “the cars that go boom.”
Full Auto is shaping up to be not only a unique racing game in a world obsessed with simulators, but one of the most fun next-gen titles for Xbox 360. Where Burnout 3 and others have taken arcade racing on the current generation, Full Auto promises to take arcade racing to new and fully destructible heights.
— Jonas Allen
