The Bottom Line
Pros
- Very Pretty Textures with a High Frame Rate
- Racing Combat Missions are a Blast
- Good Variety of Slick Weapons
Cons
- Poor Vehicle Design
- Arena Combat Missions are Painful
- Paper Thin Plot is Quite Annoying to Listen to
- No Sixaxis Support? Really?
Description
- Graphics: 4 Smooth and silky. FAB2 is one of the best looking launch titles with lots of shiny things
- Sound: 3 Unmemorable sound track and effects are scarred by the confused voice of the female AI you work for in the game
- Control: -1 Sorry guys, not only is it an odd layout, but you get negative marks for no Sixaxis support
- Difficulty: 3.5 There's a nice line between passing a level and accomplishing all the goals
- Multiplayer: 3 All of the modes are there, but what a cool twist it would have been to enable a co-op mode
- Online: 3 You can race-combat (racebat?) 8 people online, which seems like too few...
- Documentation: 4 The game will teach you everything you need to know
- Rated: Teen I think the ESRB goes easy on auto violence, to me, it's just as jarring as a shooter
- All scores are out of 5. The overall score is not a combination of the above scores.
Guide Review - Full Auto 2: Battlelines Review (PS3)
Normally I'd tell you about about the story of the game here, but it is so bad I can't stand to even type about it. Something about an A.I. at war with a street gang, and you need to blow stuff up with your car to save everyone. It's all a set up for you to get to play Project Gotham Racing with guns. Seriously, if they called the various achievements "kudos" they'd be the same game, only with more explosions. I mean that as a compliment, BTW.
So you race, you blow stuff up, you unlock bigger guns and better cars. The guns are great, as are the tracks, and the enemy AI works. The only real downers in the visuals are the car designs look like PGR cars with guns glued to them. The biggest problem is with the painfully bad arena games set in stadiums so small you have to wonder why you are driving when you'd probably be more deadly on foot. They are small, crowded, and you don't get to skip them.
Full Auto 2: Battlelines is a great engine, a decent game, and a horrible story. Take it in that order and there is fun to be had, despite its shortcomings.
