Full Auto 2: Battlelines Updated Hands-On

If you're old enough, you might remember the old role-playing game Car Wars, which lets you pilot suped-up vehicles complete with all manner of armor plating and high-tech weaponry. The Full Auto video game series has its roots in that old pen-and-paper RPG, at least from a conceptual standpoint, and after making appearances on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the series is moving to handhelds with Full Auto 2: Battlelines for the PlayStation Portable. At a recent Sega PSP event, we got a chance to try an updated build of the game to see how it's coming along since our first look.

Since our original preview, the development team at Deep Fried Entertainment has made strides in improving the overall look of the game--whereas in our previous look, the roads were barren of other cars, the addition of traffic to the updated build made the single-player game events that much more intense. That said, this being a game that's more about the adventure of combat racing than being worried about negotiating turns, it's obvious that a few corners of realism have been cut to keep the pace of the game moving. Crashing into buildings, for example, is pretty forgiving, and more often than not, you'll simply be bounced back onto the road as opposed to being stopped dead in your tracks. In addition, there's plenty of roadside objects that you can barrel through without losing so much as a single mile per hour on your speedometer, such as fruit stands, glass walls on the sides of buildings, and various boxes and barrels.

However, this isn't to say that you won't run into obstacles during race events. Some of the larger objects on a circuit, such as bridges, can be destroyed using your car's various weapons, raining concrete down onto the road and creating an increasingly challenging path for any car behind you. Of course, for the circuit races, each succeeding lap becomes more treacherous because of the ever-increasing debris that litters the tracks. Additionally, the biggest objects in the game can't be totally destroyed with one shot; for example, it will take you several laps to bring down each of the supports on one of the huge bridges in the game.

The single-player career mode in Battlelines will feature a mixture of circuit, point-to-point races, and battle arenas, which are closed-off areas where multiple cars battle it out. Though the career mode will include more than 50 events to take part in, the developers have designed the path through the storyline in career mode to be flexible. Players who just want to get to the end of the game quickly will be able to bypass many of the missions if they wish, and the completists will be able to unlock all of the game's various goodies by beating each mission.

The various missions in Battlelines take place in one of three locales--America, Asia, and Europe--and each level's graphical design will follow a general look based on each of the three locations. European events, for example, will all take place in snowy environments, while races in America will all have a more downtown feel to them. Asian events will be unmistakable due to their Asian-influenced architecture and distinct, brightly colored urban levels. All of the levels pack a surprising amount of detail to them, and even better, the frame rate held up admirably during our time with the game.

Attractive levels and a solid frame rate don't mean much if the cars aren't up to snuff, however. Luckily, Battlelines seems to have that covered, as well, with 15 vehicles to drive, 10 of them new to the PSP version of the game. We saw high-speed sports cars and monstrous monster trucks, all of which are rated on attributes such as toughness, speed, and maneuverability. In the single-player game, you collect new rides by beating bosses, and you can customize your cars with new paint jobs and more than 100 vinyls, which can be collected along the way.

And then there are the weapons, 10 of which are brand new for the PSP version of Battlelines, bringing the total to 18 for the game. One of the new favorites (at least for the producers we spoke to) is the EMP, which sends out an electromagnetic pulse, slowing down any opponent unlucky enough to be caught up in it. Many of the weapons in the game follow a standard upgrade model; if you start out with simple machine guns, you'll eventually be able to install upgraded chainguns. Similarly, simple rockets will be upgraded to homing missiles later on in the game. You'll be able to mount weapons on the side of your car now, in addition to on the hood and the rear of the car, a feature that wasn't available in the PS3 version of the game.

Controls in Battlelines are straightforward: You steer with the analog stick and use the X and square buttons for gas and brake. Weapons are controlled with the left and right triggers, and aiming has been simplified a bit compared to the PS3 game. The game uses an autolock aim to help you target your opponents, and by pressing the triangle button, you can also lock on to various parts of the destructible environments found on the circuits. Your targeting reticule will turn yellow when you are close to a destructible object, and it will turn red when you've locked on with the triangle button.

Beyond the single-player career mode, Battlelines will include an event attack mode, where you can go back and attempt any event you've already completed to try and get a better score (and, in turn, try to open up a few new unlockables). There's also ad hoc wireless multiplayer for up to four people. Multiplayer modes include head-on, down & back, and arena deathmatch, which we got to try out during our hands-on test. Before a match begins, you can customize your car of choice and outfit it with weapons, and then you're dropped into the match. The arena match we played featured a medium-sized circular course on one of the snowy European circuits. In the middle of the circuit were a number of buildings intersected by roadways that you could cut through to get to the other side of the oval circuit quickly. The circuit was small enough to accommodate four players easily without being so crowded that you could never find space to take a breather.

The notion of suped-up, weaponized cars will probably never get old, even if it's moved from pen-and-paper RPGs to video game systems. Full Auto 2: Battlelines is due for release in mid-March, and we'll have a full review of the game once it reaches store shelves.