Full Auto 2: Battlelines

Gimp My Ride

So what else is new? Full Auto 2's developers also spent some of that time which could have been spent fixing the vehicle handling on a bunch of other features - ranging from the welcome to the meaningless. At the "welcome" end of the spectrum are the various power-ups you can pick up as you bimble around the various levels, with the "Full Repair" token being a sight which inspires sighs of relief in many of the more challenging (or frustrating, depending on how kind we're being) levels.

Further down the line towards "meaningless", we have the new storyline mode which takes centre stage in the game. This is an utterly absurd tale which sees you being tasked by a city police Artificial Intelligence to take on the bandits roaming the city in their armed vehicles causing mayhem. Needless to say, the best way to combat this is to get yourself an armed vehicle and roam around causing mayhem. Still, I guess if it was set in Britain they'd probably just raise the taxes on petrol, make a vague statement about the vital role fathers must play in the raising of purveyors of automotive carnage, and hope for the best - which wouldn't make for a terribly interesting game, we confess.

Back in the realms of "welcome", we find significant improvements to the frame-rate in Full Auto 2. Much as we'd love to inspire you all to write 800 comments of outraged fury at our partisan stance on the console war, we should probably note that an extra 12 months in development over the 360 version has probably done wonders for the engine, not the Awesome Power of Sony's Behemoth - but regardless of the reason, Full Auto 2 is definitely a better game when the framerate doesn't collapse like a house of cards every time the sparks start flying.

Graphically, the game doesn't look remarkably different to its Xbox 360 predecessor - it's sharper, certainly, and shows off the console's 1080p capabilities nicely. However, with so many of the assets being recycled from the 360, it's unsurprising that the game on the whole looks familiar. The audio, too, is unremarkable - fairly generic fast-paced electronica which fits the game well, spares us the indignity of having to listen to what some music executive at a game publisher thinks is Hip and Cool, but won't have anyone rushing out to buy a soundtrack.

One area where Full Auto 2 doesn't skimp, thankfully, is the multiplayer - assuming you can actually find anyone to play against online. We had to jump through a few hoops to arrange a game, as there were hardly any running in the United States no matter when we tried. It's a shame, because the multiplayer actually works quite well, with generally good performance (even on a transatlantic match, it was playable if a bit jerky) and a few interesting modes, including some team-based arena modes which have objectives rather than straightforward deathmatch play. A glaring omission is the lack of any kind of communication with your teammates or opponents; the game doesn't support voice headsets, which takes a significant part of the fun out of playing online.

Drive Through

Full Auto 2 was an opportunity to really push the franchise forward - or rather, to give what was initially a very mediocre game a chance of becoming a genuine franchise. As it stands, this is a step sideways rather than a step forward; the fixed framerate and new arena mode are welcome additions, but the core problems with Full Auto haven't been fixed. The difficulty level has gone from being utterly pitiful to being, on occasion, insanely frustrating and unfair, which is a change but by no means an improvement. The level design, the handling and the balance of the whole game remain skewed - just as badly as they were before, if not worse, albeit in different directions this time.