At this very moment there is a Full Auto demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace just waiting for you to download it. It is the same demo that was included on the Official Xbox Magazine disc a couple months ago, but it gives you a pretty good taste of what the game is going to be like.
My first taste? A little sweet (the gorgeous graphics) but mostly bitter (the gameplay). It is being marketed as “Burnout with guns” but it isn’t even anywhere near Burnout’s league. The control feels very loose and sloppy and the core gameplay just isn’t all that impressive. We have been driving around and shooting things in games for a long time now (Super Mario Kart, Twisted Metal, Extreme G, etc.) and Full Auto (at least the demo) doesn’t really do anything special to differentiate itself. Well, it does do one thing different with a feature called Unwreck where you charge up a meter by blowing stuff up and can then rewind the game for a few seconds when you crash. Unwreck is a pretty cool idea and it works just as advertised, but it doesn’t make the ho-hum gameplay any better or worse than what we have seen before.
The game does definitely look very pretty with lots of particles flying all over the place and tons of explosions. Full Auto won’t disappoint on the graphical front.
As I mentioned, though, this demo is a few months old and isn’t a firm representation of the final product. Some things can change for the better so we’ll keep our hopes up. Also, the final product will have online play and many other features that will likely make the overall package much more appealing. I would suggest waiting for some reviews to show up before buying it, though, just to make sure the gameplay is up to snuff.
