I hope everyone had a Happy Valentine’s day. Or  a Happy “whatever the latest real world holidaytranslated into your MMO of choice is” day.

So Full Auto on the 360 is interesting. At face value, it could easily be mistaken for a Burnout title. It looks like it, it feels like it, it smells like it… wait, no… nevermind. Aside from a subtle difference in the design qualities, Full Auto is a Burnout, only with a bit more destruction (if that’s even fathomable).

However there is one key difference, and it’s the feature that really defines  Full Auto, and prevents it from being just a “blah” racer. And that’s the rewind button. It’s like the developers said “ok, we’re going to make this game so chaotic, and have so much stuff happening at once, the player will be overloaded. BUT, we’re going to give them an option to rewind their mistakes”. And that’s how the game plays.

Between dodging traffic, powersliding around corners, hitting jumps, aiming your guns and missiles, keeping an eye out for shortcuts, driving through buildings, avoiding debris and explosions and fire, and trying to rack up points… the game is nearly impossible to keep track of. But you do have that rewind button.

So if you’re tearing around a corner, and you see a jump that you missed, or if you hit the jump but you took it cockeyed and go flying into a building, you can rewind and give it another go. Didn’t see that turn up ahead, and drove straight into a building? Rewind. Got a rocket shoved up your tailpipe? Rewind and dodge that sucker.

This may seem like it would ruin the game, letting you erase all your mistakes and do things over. But the game moves so fast, it balances out perfectly. How many times have you been running a perfect race, and on the last lap, fifty meters from the finish line you wipe out and everyone passes you. Now you can zip back a bit and try to correct your mistake. It’s a pretty nifty game.

Speaking of nifty games, if you have a Fileplanet account you can now get the full version of Everquest 2 for free (Free is relative. You have to pay for your Fileplanet subscription). So if you wanted to give it a try, now might be a good time.

EQ2 is on the verge of releasing their second expansion. Finding the core game in stores, I’ve heard, is pretty difficult as Sony phases out the original box. As has been the tradition with EQ, every few expansions they discontinue all the singular products and release a compilation package. Over the last couple of months the primary method of acquiring EQ2 has been digital download anyway, so here’s your chance to get the $20 purchase for free.

I’ve been playing EQ2 for the last few weeks, and I’m loving it. If your computer can handle it, the graphics blow WoW out of the water as far as lighting, shadows and texture. Some people like the original character models, personally I prefer the new SOGA models, but the game gives you the option to choose. Here’s a link to a comparison.