unwinddesign
01-26-2006, 08:16 PM
As many of the other 360/Live owners on here may have noticed, the demo for the game Full Auto was released recently. It had been available on the newstand with the new OXM, but it's now free for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Here's my thoughts on the demo.
If you've played Burnout 3/Burnout Revenge and Vigilante 8, think of Full Auto as a head on collision between the two. You've got the speed and insanity of Burnout coupled with the blow *(% up mentality of Vigilante 8. The basic premise of the game pits you in a race against 7 other players. The catch is, each of you is armed to the teeth with a two weapons each -- these vary from missiles to shotguns. The goal is not only to win the race, but to blow your opponents to kingdom come (along with the surrounding environment), earning "wreck points." There are various goals set before the race for you to achieve, such as finish 1st with 100,000 wreck points, etc.
The graphics in the game look excellent. The physics engine is robust, with shit flying all over the screen every which way. Particle effects flood over your car, making it difficult to see through the smoke, fire and sparks being thrown about. The adrenaline created by the utter carnage unfolding before your eyes usurps even the rush that the Burnout series' amazing speed gives. Even though Full Auto is a tad slower than Burnout 3/Revenge, the multitude of explosions more than make up for it. Seriously, your adrenaline will be kicked in to over-drive from all the crazy shit blowing up around you.
The music fits the game well, as do the sound effects. This game is loud, and the sounds of crunching metal, breaking glass, and exploding missiles are all spot on. The game sounds like it should, and the sounds adds to the whole crazy as shit atmosphere.
What the developers are advertising most is the "unwreck" feature in the game. Revolutionary? Maybe, it's really debatable. It's basically what I like to call an "in game mulligan" -- that is, if you fuck up a turn, just do it over. It works well, and it alleviates the frustration of CONSTANTLY restarting after crashing 2 seconds after a race begins. It's really nice to have in a game like Full Auto, since the game is so much about risk taking -- should I take that jump (even though I don't know where in the name of fuck it leads) -- or should I play it safe? Hell, you can have it both ways now -- screw up the jump, "unwreck," and just go the safe route. It opens up some neat possibilties, and it'll be interesting to see what the developers do in later levels.
Unfortunately, there are some extremely glaring problems in Full Auto, and they do hamper the fun a good bit. Number one on the list is slowdown -- this game has A LOT of it. Things will slow down to a crawl if everyone decides to fire off their weapon at once; I also noticed some complete jumps in frame rate when going around certain corners. I don't know if this is just a problem with streaming data off the hard drive, or if it's an optimization problem, but it does hurt the flow of the game a bit.
Secondly, the boost just feels lame, especially in comparison to Burnout's. It doesn't feel like a rush at all. Not well done. Sometimes it feels like you are going slower than you were prior to initiating the boost.
Finally -- and this might strike some as a non-issue, or bizarre complaint -- there's no way to defend against attacks. This might be limited to the demo, but the only way to avoid getting hit by an impending missle is to veer off the side of the road. Your armor deteriorates extremely fast when there's two or three people on your tail, almost encouraging the player to hang back and take pot shots at the race leader. I guess this is the point, but still, some sort of "blocking" or evasion technique would be cool.
I also was wondering a few things while I was playing:
-How is unwreck going to work online/split-screen?
-How many total cars/tracks are there going to be?
-How is progressing through the game going to work (i.e. similar to Burnout, or something different)
-Is Xbox Live multi-play going to be able to keep up with the game's carnage?
Despite its flaws, I'm still psyched for Full Auto's release. If you haven't already, go on over and download the 600+ MB demo and fire it up. It's a good time, and it's free.
If you've played Burnout 3/Burnout Revenge and Vigilante 8, think of Full Auto as a head on collision between the two. You've got the speed and insanity of Burnout coupled with the blow *(% up mentality of Vigilante 8. The basic premise of the game pits you in a race against 7 other players. The catch is, each of you is armed to the teeth with a two weapons each -- these vary from missiles to shotguns. The goal is not only to win the race, but to blow your opponents to kingdom come (along with the surrounding environment), earning "wreck points." There are various goals set before the race for you to achieve, such as finish 1st with 100,000 wreck points, etc.
The graphics in the game look excellent. The physics engine is robust, with shit flying all over the screen every which way. Particle effects flood over your car, making it difficult to see through the smoke, fire and sparks being thrown about. The adrenaline created by the utter carnage unfolding before your eyes usurps even the rush that the Burnout series' amazing speed gives. Even though Full Auto is a tad slower than Burnout 3/Revenge, the multitude of explosions more than make up for it. Seriously, your adrenaline will be kicked in to over-drive from all the crazy shit blowing up around you.
The music fits the game well, as do the sound effects. This game is loud, and the sounds of crunching metal, breaking glass, and exploding missiles are all spot on. The game sounds like it should, and the sounds adds to the whole crazy as shit atmosphere.
What the developers are advertising most is the "unwreck" feature in the game. Revolutionary? Maybe, it's really debatable. It's basically what I like to call an "in game mulligan" -- that is, if you fuck up a turn, just do it over. It works well, and it alleviates the frustration of CONSTANTLY restarting after crashing 2 seconds after a race begins. It's really nice to have in a game like Full Auto, since the game is so much about risk taking -- should I take that jump (even though I don't know where in the name of fuck it leads) -- or should I play it safe? Hell, you can have it both ways now -- screw up the jump, "unwreck," and just go the safe route. It opens up some neat possibilties, and it'll be interesting to see what the developers do in later levels.
Unfortunately, there are some extremely glaring problems in Full Auto, and they do hamper the fun a good bit. Number one on the list is slowdown -- this game has A LOT of it. Things will slow down to a crawl if everyone decides to fire off their weapon at once; I also noticed some complete jumps in frame rate when going around certain corners. I don't know if this is just a problem with streaming data off the hard drive, or if it's an optimization problem, but it does hurt the flow of the game a bit.
Secondly, the boost just feels lame, especially in comparison to Burnout's. It doesn't feel like a rush at all. Not well done. Sometimes it feels like you are going slower than you were prior to initiating the boost.
Finally -- and this might strike some as a non-issue, or bizarre complaint -- there's no way to defend against attacks. This might be limited to the demo, but the only way to avoid getting hit by an impending missle is to veer off the side of the road. Your armor deteriorates extremely fast when there's two or three people on your tail, almost encouraging the player to hang back and take pot shots at the race leader. I guess this is the point, but still, some sort of "blocking" or evasion technique would be cool.
I also was wondering a few things while I was playing:
-How is unwreck going to work online/split-screen?
-How many total cars/tracks are there going to be?
-How is progressing through the game going to work (i.e. similar to Burnout, or something different)
-Is Xbox Live multi-play going to be able to keep up with the game's carnage?
Despite its flaws, I'm still psyched for Full Auto's release. If you haven't already, go on over and download the 600+ MB demo and fire it up. It's a good time, and it's free.