A decent, if short, portable battle racing title.

User Rating: 7.5 | Full Auto 2: Battlelines PSP
Once again I find myself compelled to refute game reviews by "professional" video game critics that are completely off the mark. In this case, the reviewer makes so many overtly erroneous comments about the game that I question whether he has even played the game himself.

First off, let's get this straight: you absolutely _can_ unwreck your vehicle (or just rewind the race for any other reason) as long as your unwreck meter isn't empty. The fact that the reviewer believes this function to be missing is an absolute mystery to me. Did he not look at the controls for the game? Or did he just skip trying the altogether?

With that out of the way, let's get to the meat of this review. Yes, this is yet another battle racing game--though not exactly like Mario Kart/Crash Tag Team Racing. It's sort of a blend between the Burnout and Twisted Metal--kinda like FlatOut Head On, but with weapons.

While Battlelines isn't exactly groundbreaking, nor does it fill a completely new niche, it does have a fairly unique feel and style that isn't seen anywhere else in the battle racing genre. It's not a cart racing game, and it isn't strictly racing or vehicular combat. So in that sense it is kinda unique, I guess.

What I like about Full Auto 2: Battlelines is its fluid and fast-paced gameplay that is both easy to pick up and very well suited to a portable system. This is gaming on the go in the truest sense. Sure, the plot is shallow and absurd--who am i kidding, the story to this game is downright retarded--but that really isn't what a portable combat racing title like this is about.

One has to at least give the developers credit for upstaging the drab and unforgivably poor graphics that many well established franchises have delivered in their portable offerings. Full Auto 2 actually features surprisingly good graphics (about on par with FlatOut: Head On) that, frankly, puts many popular mainstream racing titles like Need For Speed: * and Midnight Club 3 to shame.

The overall presentation of the game is very slick--from the superb-looking car models, to the huge variety of decorative vinyls you can put on each car, down to the detailed level designs that feature destructible environments.

More importantly Full Auto 2 features great gameplay that, as i said before, can be quickly picked up and played on the go. The driving mechanics feel very fluid and well-tuned for the adrenaline-fueled fast-paced gameplay that the game tries to deliver. The objectives of each stage may range from destroying a certain number of opponents (or specific opponents) to destroying a certain number of environmental objects (or "targets" that cause objects to fall on opponents or get in their way), to finishing the race above a certain position. This gives Battlelines a more varied gameplay than most racing games, in addition to featuring straight vehicular combat stages much like Twisted Metal.

Most of your time will be spent unlocking and trying out different cars, weapons, and vinyls--and there's a fairly decent variety of each, which gives the game a pretty deep level of customization for this particular genre. The game features all fictional vehicles, but they actually look much better than a lot of licensed vehicles or cars you'd see out on the road these days (*cough* H2 *cough*).

My biggest complaint would be that the game is a bit on the short side. Most people can probably beat the game within a week. But there is also multiplayer play over Ad Hoc wireless, as well as gamesharing. The dumb storyline is pretty negligible since the point of the game is racing/blasting other vehicles regardless of why you're racing/blasting them--who cares, right?

Not the greatest game for the PSP, sure, but you could do much worse in picking a racing title.