Friday 19 May 2006
Full Auto 2: Battlelines, the PS3's first car-combat game, already looks like a marked improvement over its repetitive Xbox 360 predecessor. Sega's still keeping the single-player portion under wraps, but we've spent some time tearing around one of the eight-player deathmatch arenas, and it's explosive stuff.
Taking the focus off racing, Full Auto 2 let us pick from four cars - two muscle cars, a sleek (but extremely light) sports car and an SUV that carries extra armour - and then pick out two different weapons from a selection of 21 different missile launchers, machine-guns and mine-throwers.
Above: The original Full Auto was a so-so combat racer - expect the sequel to be loaded with much more kaboom
After that, we were turned loose in a brilliantly detailed city block, which we proceeded to take apart while trying to blast our opponents with missiles.
At first, the action seems like any other car-combat game - race around, blast the other drivers and drop mines whenever the helpful radar map shows you that someone's on your tail. But Full Auto 2 has a few things that help it stand out, including a multilevel, super fast turbo boost that throws up blur lines around the car.
A 29-year-old PC racing game going cyberpunk anime with Troy Baker, Initial D drifting, and cutscenes from the Metroid: Other M studio sure wasn't on my Game Awards bingo card
A speedrunner just beat Need for Speed: Most Wanted's world record by 90 minutes - by using Half-Life's Gordon Freeman instead of a car
