Full Auto is the first car combat game to enter the next-generation fray, and while many things about the game will rev you up, other things will throttle down your enjoyment -- and a couple missing ingredients may even empty your tank completely.

Full Auto is your classic car combat game, i.e., big huge guns mounted on cool killer cars of all shapes and sizes, lots of fast driving and blowing the relentless crap out of everyone and everything around you. Like the Twisted Metal series, Vigilante 8 and a slough of copycats, Full Auto has three primary ingredients: destruction, destruction and destruction with a little bit of destruction thrown in for good measure.

The good news is that it's Mad-max fun and delivers well where it should, combining obliteration with racing like only a videogame can. That is to say, out-racing your opponent and leaving him so far behind that he disappears from you rear view mirror is satisfying, but blowing the $#@! out of him so that he disappears from the screen altogether is pure bliss!

The ability to choose your weapons and vehicles is another bright spot in Full Auto. Go all out offensive with missiles and chain guns, or go full-on defensive with mines and smoke screens. The weapons each offer decent variety and upgrades -- modding your missiles so that they're heat seekers, for example.

As a next-generation title, Full Auto delivers on the expected, eyebrow-raising graphics. The level of detail in the environments is impressive -- and not just to look at; almost everything you see can be blow'd-up or driven through most spectacularly. The slick shine on your ride's paint job and the reflections in your chrome accents is likewise luscious, while the obliging replay button lets you look and go "WOW!" over and over.

What is not expected from a next-generation title, however, is explosive graphics and intricate details that come at the price of performance. There's noticeable slow-down in the action; frame-rate bogs when things get hairy, so much so that it takes you out of rhythm with the motorized mayhem, and that's a substantial drag.

Also, while there are 20+ different vehicles in Full Auto, most of which must be unlocked by playing lots and winning some, which is quite an enticement, it's not long before you notice they all kind of feel the same, that handling characteristics differ very little from ride to ride.

A couple more missing ingredients has Full Auto straying far from the "hot new franchise" mark completely. The single player career mode is enjoyable at first, but about half way through it becomes repetitive and stops conveying any sense of progression. So not so much a "career" mode as a "dead end job" mode. Same race types, over and over with what feels like the same cars, over and over. If you could make your own custom ride and continue to upgrade it along the way, attacking each level with some nuanced tweak, the single player game would be much more engrossing. As it stands, it's "Meet the new car. Same as the old car."

What is perhaps the game's biggest disappointment is that there is no last-man-standing type of arena mode. The bread and butter of the car combat genre is the ubiquitous free-for-all, where everyone has at it in a large open environment, fighting to the death like maniacal motorized gladiators - but that's is nowhere to be seen! Wha?!

The multiplayer with up to eight players via Xbox Live is a great time as often as not, but it too suffers from the aforementioned frame-rate bog and arena mode no-show.

If you're a car combat fanatic willing to forgive Full Auto's glaring shortcomings and arena absenteeism, there's still much destructive satisfaction to be found here. And, for a bonus, more destruction. But everyone else would be best off considering Full Auto as a quick weekend rental or a pre-played cheapie.