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Seemingly
little has changed since SEGA’s showing of one of its heavily
westernised early Xbox360 hopes at E3 2005, we’re still presented
with two vehicles, to race through  one track and with only AI
opponents to kick on the way. However, under the hood at least, this
isn’t entirely the truth.
One
of the major bug-bears of the E3
2005 Preview, the handling, has been reworked to the nth degree
and now the cars slip and slide sideways with ease. Objectives in
this updated Preview Code simply consist of attaining a pre-set amount of
Wreck Points whilst qualifying in a set position and, in reality,
although obtaining the Wreck Points maybe be all-too often
disconcertingly easy, qualification often poses much of a challenge.
Wreck Points are earnt simply by wrecking things, surprisingly.
Course objects and traffic provide a small amount of points, but
your race opponents are where the real bounty is – with 5,000
bonus points for an elimination, or 15,000 for eliminating your
rival.
The
title’s time-rewind feature is as endearing as it’s attempts for
immense detail in an very Arcade-esque game. A press of the RB
Button will drain your  Unwreck Meter, whilst turning the screen into
a yellow/black tinted angled view of the last few seconds in
reverse, much like the Sands Of Time rewind feature seen in Prince
Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. A nice a touch as it, the feature
is often deemed unmistakeably important by the game, when the result
of either your own or an opponent’s destruction results in little
more than a BurnOut-esque crash-penalty; instead of being
removed from the race each player simply suffers a delay similar to
that of being hit by a Blue Shell in Mario KartDS.
The
visuals are slick and polished with a great deal of detail and
incredible draw-distances. Full Auto holds its head-high with
the promise of becoming one of the best looking Xbox360 games
available, with the only issues being a fair amount of frame-rate
stuttering  and occasionally poor flame and liquid effects, but
hopefully Pseudo Interactive will see their way to rectifying these
issues before final release.
Features
such as two-player Spilt-Screen and XboxLIVE! competitions
have been promised, but the real-meat will be in whether the
developers deem it wise to include a two-player Co-Operative Mode,
in which one player drives whist the other acts as the gunner, both
mounted in the same vehicle. Due for release in the UK in February,
2006, with only the average Project Gotham Racing 3, the
incredibly samey Ridge Racer 6 and dismal Need For Speed:
Most Wanted available on the Xbox360, Full Auto currently
has little competition for the Racing Game crown, even though it’s
quite an abstract challenger.
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