Full Auto 2: Battlelines
- March 27, 2007 16:56 PM PST
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Like many others from time to time I enjoy an old rickety wooden roller coaster; nausea, dizziness, and disorientation included. This however is not something I welcome in my video game playing experience.
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Full Auto II: Battlelines is that jarring amusement park experience that looks best from a distance.
Chaos and Destruction are Good Things, Right?
The game is not much more than a simple port of its PS2 brother; only squeezed into the PSP. The screen is filled with so much action that playing the game just feels chaotic and it quickly becomes aggravating. The missions are filled with objectives from destroying co-racers to obliterating objects in the environments. The problem is there is no targeting system or markers directing where to fire. The majority of the time I just fired my guns randomly and felt like I was shooting lead ducks at a carnival stand.
The action is intense and non-stop, but this actually gets in the way of the game being enjoyable. After playing for five minutes, I put my PSP down and felt like my head was spinning. Rather than feeling like the cars moved at high-speeds it seemed like a strobe light flashing in my eyes. There is so much going on at once that it felt like I was watching a Japanese Saturday morning cartoon cranked up on super-sugar-saccharine cereal.
Full Auto II's biggest problem is that it can't decide whether it's a racing or a destruction game. Many times I thought I was firing at my target and did no damage at all. Hitting the speed boost almost seems pointless because when you're too far ahead of your opponent there's no chance to destroy them.
Make a Break for It
A story bridges together the mission based objectives with an "escape from New York" theme, but played out with actors that make Patrick Swayze seem as cool as Chuck Norris. A doomed world where rival gangs battle each other with machine gun mounted hotrods is a device best left to Mad Max, and it's hard to see the relevance of cut scenes when I just wanted to get through the next race.
The controls are clunky and often times I found my car stuck in buildings or inside bridge supports. The graphics and effects are decent and there is plenty of detail in the backgrounds, but this comes at the expense of smooth action.
Despite the licensed soundtrack with big name artists, the audio is like nails on a chalkboard; it adds ambiance in that it places you right in the middle of a traveling amusement park. Rather than mixing speed and destruction Full Auto feels messy and made me wish I could turn my rocket launcher toward my head.
Pros: Big guns and destructible buildings.
Cons: Poor controls make smashing into buildings far too common.
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