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Full Auto 2: Battlelines is a combat racing game with guns, missiles, destructible scenery, and a limited time-reversal gimmick, but it never manages to be interesting enough to be memorable. The bad parts and the good just sit there, side by side, but nothing ever manages to stand out enough to stick in the mind.
It isn't that the elements aren't there to make something fun. Driving fast and destroying things is usually a winning recipe, and Full Auto 2 has a lot of that going on. There's an overarching plot about the world being controlled by a supercomputer, and the racers originally being a seed of rebellious chaos that's forgotten its purpose, but it's not really important. What matters is speed and destruction, but the presentation is so weak that neither feels satisfying.
Driving fast and destroying things is usually a winning recipe, and Full Auto 2 has a lot of that going on.
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The basic game structure is divided up into Career and Event Attack. The latter is basically free play using all the events and equipment unlocked in Career, so it's the former where most of the time will be spent. As is standard, the opening cars and weapons are weak, but playing through eventually unlocks bigger and better toys to play with.
But the problems kick in almost immediately. Full Auto 2 doesn't remember basic info such as previous car used, weapon loadout, or even color and vinyls, so not only do you get to re-select them for each and every event but sit through a couple seconds of loading for each car, as well. Like the Nosferatu? It's a good ways down on the list, and you get to see each car load into the menu on the way down to the one you want, every single race. Vinyls, colors, and weapons are faster, but having to re-enter them each time is just plain obnoxious.
Then it's of to the races, or at least the destruction. Coming in first isn't all that important in most events; instead, destroying a certain number of objects takes precedence. Roadside obstacles, enemy racers, event items, traffic, or the obliteration of any combination of the four are what's needed to claim victory, so long as you don't come in last. So Full Auto 2 ends up being a game about blowing stuff up instead of racing, and that wouldn't be a problem if it didn't feel so pointless. Whether it's blasting through enemies or traffic, the visual presentation just doesn't give any punch to the destruction. It can be hard to tell who it is you're targeting half the time, and you end up taking it on faith that whatever it was that just got a missile up its tailpipe was the right thing to kill. The event items, breakable objects that litter the track with large chunks of debris, are exempt from this due to having a special lock-on, and are even somewhat fun to take out.
It's too bad that the car combat is easy and somewhat dull then. Blasting through traffic and taking out the numerous random objects each course is covered with is unsatisfying, and the car handling feels just plain weird. Even with these issues though, I can't bring myself to actively feel any strong emotions to Full Auto 2. Maybe it's a result of the game's ease, progressing on to new and better toys relatively quickly, or maybe it's because the basics of car combat are just strong enough to negate any offense the game might otherwise cause. Whatever it is, Full Auto 2 is a small step above actively bad, but that's still not good enough.
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