When it comes to turning vehicles into twisted scraps of metal, nothing comes close to the appropriately titled Twisted Metal series as well as EA’s own addictive Burnout series, which have been popular on the home consoles. Luckily for us PSP owners, both of these games have graced Sony’s handheld and with much success. Now Sega’s own Full Auto (a series that was introduced on the Xbox 360 and continued on Sony’s PS3) finds itself on the PSP with Full Auto 2: Battlelines … a port of the PS3 sequel.

Full Auto 2’s main Career mode actually has a story attached to it but don’t expect this game to have cutscenes or anything that weaves a very deep or compelling tale. Rather, we are treated to a setup that tells of a not-so distant future when natural disasters manage to wipe out millions of people and threatens our very existence. The NSA and a technologies company called SecWare Industries have created the ultimate supercomputer called Sage to track weather patterns to respond to the growing crisis. Sage was great at predicting disasters but in the end it became self-aware and has taken complete control. A group of revolutionaries have gathered together with their vehicles and weapons and decided to confuse Sage by creating their own man-made natural disaster with a series of Velocity Death Battles. I know, it doesn’t make a lot sense but then again fans of the racing/demolition genre aren’t in it for the story.

Much like the console version of the game, Career Mode comes complete with race objectives you must complete in order to successfully finish the race and move on to the next one. The objectives range from destroying a set number of rivals to a set number of civilian cars and then there’s the main objective you must see through such as finishing the race first or even third. Full Auto 2 does mix things up a little in the objective department such as completing a race before the timer runs out but the game remains just as repetitive as the console version.

Still, there is fun to be had in this repetitive game and it doesn’t come in the form of the racing aspect of the series. Unlike the Burnout series (where destruction and racing are mixed in nicely), Full Auto 2 does destruction right even on the PSP. Not only can you trash other vehicles that get in your way, you can also destroy your environment. A rocket to a shipping container, for instance, will bring the shipping container down on whatever rival just so happens to be under it. You can smash right into a store window and create a new shortcut through the store itself. Oh, and if a rival happens to be racing near the vicinity of a gas station you can fire a few rounds into the gas pumps and now only blow away your rival but also the entire gas station. Yes, these are the elements that make this game so much fun to play.

Also, like the console game, you can pick vehicles from a short list of cars (you can always unlock more cars the higher you advance in Career mode) and decide on the paint and decals. The cars range from muscle cars - like the Brute - to customized pick-up trucks like the Wasp and each car handles quite differently. The most important “customizing” features to add on your car, however, come in the form of the weapons. You can have machine guns on the hood or your car as well as attach dual guns on the sides and add a mine launcher on the back. Then again, you can mix things up by adding machine guns on the side and a rocket launcher on the front. Either way you do it, your car will be well-armed.  

You can mix and match weapons to fit the race courses in the game since each race course is designed differently. Many races have you moving through wide-open spaces such as the construction site, or narrow alleyways in the city or even through traffic-filled streets. There are also power-ups scattered throughout the course that allows you to do everything from repairing your car to weapons that can instantly destroy a rival within range. Like the console games, you will also have the benefit of the Unwreck feature that allows you to “rewind” the game right before you made a mistake.

The problem with Full Auto 2 on the PSP is that much of the controls and gameplay elements aren’t as smooth. Targeting, for instance, is a quite a gamble. Will it target a rival that’s ahead of you or oncoming civilian traffic? Your guess is as good as mine. Secondly, there is no telling how injured another rival car is so for those gamers who like locking out of one car to target a car ready to explode will have to get close enough to see the damage done to said car. Sometimes, Unwreck can be unresponsive and thus leaving you to respawn at the spot where your car was demolished.

Unfortunately, the game’s visuals aren’t as striking or as impressive as the console game but that is to be expected. Still, we have seen better on the PSP and environments that are far more detailed than the one seen in this game. The cars in Full Auto 2 have their own look and while they’re not as beautifully detailed as they could have been, they do manage to show the damage done to them throughout the game. Then there are the environments that offer plenty of destructible objects that play a hand in giving you an advantage (or disadvantage) during a race. Nothing is cooler than watching a segment of an overpass land on top of a rival.

Thankfully, the game’s sound effects are actually nicely detailed. You’ll hear your car crunch into a twisted heap when you crash one too many times and you’ll hear machine gun fire and the explosions as rivals run into a mine or a gas station blows to pieces. There’s licensed music in the game as well that ranges from metal to hard rock that fit’s the game quite nicely.

In the end, Full Auto 2: Battlelines just doesn’t deliver a solid experience on the PSP nor does it do the series justice. Yes, the game does bring the same style of destructive racing and yes the game modes (including multiplayer) are pretty much intact. The problem is that in its bite-sized format the game suffers from a number of glitches and problems that keep this game from being an enjoyable racing game fit for the PSP.

Gameplay: 6.0
The game modes are everything you would expect from a Full Auto game and so is much of the gameplay. Unfortunately, the controls leave much to be desired and everything from targeting to using the Unwreck feature just doesn’t work as well as it should. The race modes are also quite repetitive.

Graphics: 6.0
Visually, the game isn’t appalling but it could have been a lot better. The cars look decent enough and the destruction that unfolds around you looks good … just don’t expect much in terms of environmental details.

Sound: 7.0
The soundtrack consists of music from Megadeth to Sum 41 as well as other hard rocking tunes. There are some wonderfully detailed sound effects that sound great through the PSP speakers.

Difficulty: Medium
Your rivals will not make it easy for you to make it to the finish line but the real challenge comes in meeting the race objectives that gets a bit harder later in Career mode. The opponent AI is actually pretty smart and you’ll find that your rivals will make good use of everything from the power ups to the environment.

Concept: 6.5
Career mode is filled with plenty to unlock such as better cars you can use during Event Attack. While repetitive, the events offer short bursts of fun. There is also a multiplayer mode that runs rather smoothly.

Multiplayer: 6.5
The lack of an online multiplayer mode is quite disappointing but at least there is Ad Hoc multiplayer fit for up to four players.

Overall: 6.2
Full Auto 2: Battlelines for the PSP fails to maintain the exhilarating car battles found in the console version of the game and brings us a game that can be both fun and frustrating at the same time. Even if you loved the console version of the game, I don’t recommend this one. Hopefully, Sega will make the right adjustments for the sequel and bring us a game that will give Burnout and Twisted Metal a run for its money.