Full Auto is basically an entire game of chimney’s falling overhead, and yes, it’s both as eye-opening as it is repetitive.

This is a racing game with guns; similar to Wipeout or a first-person Mashed, perhaps even Super Cars 2. Race around several tracks, shooting rivals, shooting buildings, shooting each other, shooting this, shooting that and woo-ing at the pretty explosions. Since the game features the Havok physics engine, the buildings all collapse in the same way that chimney did in Valve’s slice of history.

Which is nice.

The problem with Full Auto is tedium, which sets in after about half an hour of play. For a game that started off as that XNA ‘Crash’ demo, it doesn’t do a particularly good job hiding the fact it is basically one long tech-demo. The physics are wonderful, no doubt about it. Send a rocket into a petrol station and the entire road gets decimated – sides of buildings fall off, debris violently flies around and witness power lines wobbling madly as they try and break free. Everything feels solid and breakable. The final lap of a race can be quite a sight.

As a game, Full Auto isn’t terrible; the handling is quite good, the track design is passable, and although the graphics are basic they are serviceable. The game plays aggressively and relentlessly, but other than the physics nothing else really stands out. The handling feels like you are driving a car, which is always something in a car-based racing game, but it lacks subtlety or depth. Your opponents are ‘catch-up’ enabled, meaning you can race the perfect race and still take a rocket up the tailpipe and come last on the final straight. Avoiding weaponry from behind is far from easy, resulting in an extremely frustrating experience. On the flip side it is very satisfying returning the favour, if only to quench the slowly rising anger. A rewind feature, named 'Unwreck', makes a more than welcome appearence in an attempt at making the game more enjoyable. A gimmick certainly, but it cuts down on the number of unavoidable restarts.

Online is something of a saving grace for Full Auto, mainly because the AI is completely banished. It’s what you’d expect: race, shoot, avoid, shoot. There are some interesting modes, including team-play and even a mode that sees half the competition racing around the other way; calamity doesn’t ensue as you wait a minute or so trundling around the lap before the ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’ passing of the opposition, along with a flurry of badly aimed rockets and comedy head-on collisions that stops both parties dead in their tracks. Unfortunately, the popularity of the title is such that it can be tough finding any kind of opponent, and lets face it, you’d rather be playing Burnout Revenge anyway.

It’s difficult to recommend Full Auto. It’s not particularly fun, it isn’t exactly pretty and if you want to show off your 360 then there are far better ways. There are around ten hours in the single player mode, but it begins to grate after the first. Chances are the remaining time will be spent purely to earn some 360 Achievement Points. Entertainment?

Tedium.