SEGA's X360 rewind racer

With the Xbox 360 bandwagon now clearly in sight, publishers are keen to be seen leaping on it left and right. SEGA's already announced one X360 title - Monolith's Condemned - and this morning announces another, called Full Auto, which features Prince of Persia-style rewind feature to undo the explosive collisions you'll be watching whenever you mess up.

Screenshots here.

Full Auto "combines fully automatic, weapon-equipped vehicles with highly detailed urban landscapes" and claims to have "the most destructive environments ever featured in the racing genre". Weapons include machineguns and cannons. Full Auto also supports Xbox Live.

The cars ought to be pretty destructible too; word has it that Full Auto was the basis for the "Crash Test" XNA tech demo that we saw at last year's Game Developers Conference, a video of which can still be found on Microsoft's XNA website (direct link to download).

Full Auto sees the city of Staunton held hostage by a group called "The Shepherds". You play a retired driver coerced into lethal street races by these fellows. Using an "Unwreck" feature you'll be able to rewind short periods of time and undo your mistakes. Which is a genius idea. Funny Burnout didn't think of it really.

"Play mechanics that would be impossible on current generation hardware - like the ability [in Full Auto] to turn an entire city block to rubble, then rewind the carnage at the press of a button - will truly define the next-generation experience," according to Scott Steinberg of SEGA of America.

"In Full Auto, you'll never see the same explosive sequence twice and, with our proprietary physics technology, gamers will quite literally see and experience destructive uniqueness every time they play it."

According to the release, more details should be available at www.segae3.com by the time you read this.