Full Auto 2: Battlelines
Rating:  -
This game is very fun. The graphics don't seem that next gen to me, but they are good enough. The main thing is that's its a blast to play especially with friends. This game reminds me so much of the movie Death Race and who knows this may have been the inspiration for that movie. I would highly recommend this game for anyone who wants to break out of the regular racing game stuff like PGR4 or GT4 and are just looking for a good time and something not real serious.
Rating:  -
If you like car combat, this game will fill the bill. Along with multiplayer (online and split screen) the game offers a single player career mode. Racing and battle arena are included. This is a very polished game that has not been given its due. Apparently, the first Full Auto was unpolished with bad controls which has created some negativity with the second game. Though the controls in Full Auto 2 are certainly lose (and we are talking definite arcade here), you get use to them. The graphics are excellent. If you like car combat, you will want to give this a try.
Rating: -
I don't see why this game gets bad reviews. Maybe it is because the vehicles you start with suck. Once you unlock a few cars and weapons, this game really picks up. The story in the campaign mode is a little over the top, but the gameplay is great and very challenging (in a good way). You can opt to breeze right through the game and unlock a lot of stuff on your way, or you can go through and systematically beat every challenge and sub-challenge for each stage and unlock everything. Regardless, once you have a little time under your belt, go immediately to the Online Gladiator matches. This is where the game really shines. The Ranked arena is frequented by some players with some great skills, and it is fun to try to keep up (unlike some games where it is frustrating to keep getting shot Online, this one gives you a fighting chance to stay alive by the lack of spawn camping that the game inherently has due to the fast and furious gameplay, open fields, etc, in addition to the ability you have to blast the turbos and get away from your pursuers). I've enjoyed this game more than any other PS3 game I have, including (dare I say it?) CoD4, R6V, and Assain's Creed. Those games are fun, but they just don't have the lasting appeal that FA2 has (CoD4 comes close as it is an awesome game for different reasons - still, I would rather be playing FA2).
The unranked arenas also give a few more choices for gameplay that you can't get on single player or in the ranked arenas, such as Base Assault (quasi-capture the flag-esque game) and the Cat & Mouse Race (2 slow moving trucks on opposing teams race while everyone else gets the fast & tough cars called Warlords that go and try to prevent the opposing teams truck from finishing first).
After playing this game for a month or so, I actually went out and bought 3 more PS3's and 3 more copies of FA2 just so I could play against my kids (yes, my wife was quite irritated at me). On the weekends when Mom is sleeping in, we all "sneak" into the the living room where I move our other TV's in and we camp out there and blast each other for hours. The only other game that has come close to providing my kids and I this much fun was Mario Kart Double Dash for the Game Cube (NOT the Wii version - don't get me started on how they stripped out the ability to unlock on coop mode - but I digress).
Full Auto 2 has great graphics. Yes, every now and then you'll have the stray box or pipe that falls "through" you or something like that, but in all actuality, I notice stuff like that happening on most every game (including Haze, which just released). It doesn't detract from the game at all since a) it doesn't happen all that often and b) the game is moving just too darn fast for you to notice. The actually look of the graphics is quite sharp, everything is well lit (even the darker areas) so you never have a hard time seeing, the environment is quite destructible (you can blow all sorts of stuff - and it STAYS blown up, unlike the little fake bullet holes that appear and magically disappear in many FPS's). You can even use the environment to kill your opponents (like blowing up an overhead rail, causing the speeding train passing by overhead to fall, crash, and blow up on your opponents, or blowing up a tower that when it falls, causes tunnels and ramps to appear, etc). The cars are detailed, and so is the damage that appears when you get shot. In fact, the damage is customized so that machine gun damage appears different than a missle, which is different from flame damage or even the look of a general crash into a wall.
As far as gameplay physics go, many people complain about the cars feeling "floaty". This is where I see the most flak for this game come from, and this is why in my first comment on this game I assume that these people just never tried to unlock any of the upgraded cars. Sure, the starter vehicles suck, but that just motivates you to unlock the better ones. In fact, the Enforcer (the police car) is one of the first cars you unlock, and it is one that has good enough stats and durability that it can be easily used to keep up with even the last few cars that you can unlock. It handles fine, as do most of the vehicles (minus the starters and the Phanthom). Of course, none of the car physics can match up with Gran Turismo 5, but come on, this is an arcade racer/FPS. I doubt slapping guns on GT5 cars would be very fun at all due to the realism (seriously - how many realistic cars could withstand a missle shot - especially those in GT5 that don't even show the damage?). Anyway, my take on the physics is that they handle the way I'd expect them to for the most part and aren't anything to complain about at all.
As far as variety of maps go, the races have more than enough to keep any ADHD player occupied for hours. The gladiator arenas definitely have enough to keep the online play from getting stale, but I do wish there had been more gladiator maps. I really think that if this game had come out now, the developers (now out of business - thanks for pulling out on them there, Eidos) would have been able to garner a lot more attention to this game by offering the downloadable maps that the current game developers are just now really starting to get into. Who knows, if they had offered a half-dozen extra arenas at 5 or 10 bucks or something, maybe that would have been enough to keep the afloat long enough to get some more gigs? That's probably just wishful thinking on my part, but who knows?
Are there cons to this game? Well, the biggest and only real con is the lack of players Online. It can be difficult to sometime to find others on the boards, and if you aren't patient enough, you may get the feeling that you've entered a ghost town when looking through the ranked and unranked areas. Rest assured, though, there ARE regulars that play, and many times you just have to go to the ranked arenas and just camp out for about 5-10 minutes (oftentimes the regulars are in a match, which is 10 minutes long for a ranked gladiator match, which means that if you wait, all of a sudden you'll have 5 or 6 players pop up all at once as they go for another round - but you do have to camp out as when there are players going round after round, you only have about a 15 second window to catch the wave or else their next match will begin without you, and you'll have no idea that they were ever there).
All in all, Full Auto 2 is great. I hope there is a way to squeeze out a Full Auto 3, but with the developers out of business and as much unwarranted flak this game received, there is hardly a chance of Sega trying to ressurect the title. I never played Twisted Metal before, so I can only hope that the PS3 version comes out and plays as well as FA2. Until then (and most likely long thereafter), I'm going to be online playing FA2.
Rating: -
Full Auto 2 is an extremely fun car combat game. There are both racing modes and "gladiator" modes. In the gladiator mode you drive around a map with the objective to gain the most kills/least deaths. The online play is great, complete with leaderboards. The skill of some of the online players is impressive. The soundtrack is great, graphics look good, the campaign mode has a good storyline, and the variety of cars and weapons is terrific. I highly recommend this game for anyone who owns a PS3.
Rating: -
Full Auto 2 is perfect if you are looking for a game with lots of destruction. The cars explode beautifully, making you want to keep playing. There is nothing like seeing a high-end sports car ripped to shreds by your hood-mounted twin machine guns!
The Good:
- All the vehicles are wonderfully detailed
- The environments are realistically created
- Many buildings on the multiplayer maps are completely destructible, nothing like trapping your opponent in a building and sending the whole thing crashing down on top of him!
- All the maps are created with battle in mind. No places to hide.
The Bad:
- This game didn't offer as many vehicle customizations as I thought it would
- Some levels ARE difficult, but if you adjust your tactics, they can be easily beaten
This game is perfect if you just want to have a good time.
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