EDIT: BTW, Full Frontal Assault was one of the greatest games I played that year. And I played a lot of games that year.
A BAT CREDIT CARD?! While some things in FFA are well done, there are a lot of things I really am not a fan of.
First of, the controls. I'm not talking about the control sheme (that was one of the good things), but how the characters actually move. Everything is copy-pasted from A4O - the animations, the speed, attacks, that riddiculously high jump… It all worked great with A4O's perspective but here… This just doesn't feel like a 'true' third person R&C game, they should've really tweaked some things. Why can't I grab onto any ledge other that those on flying platforms? Why is the wrench so useless now (unless you make a hyper strike)? And what the heck is with those jumping pads? They didn't work on hooverboots to feel like hooverboots that much either… Luckily most of these issues were fixed with ItN.
But the steering isn't the only 'A4O curse' - the graphics. This is the ugliest PS3 R&C game ever released (which doesn't mean it's really ugly considering the series' standards), using A4O engine worked very badly for it. A4O didn't need as much detail as the other games because of it's perspective - instead, it focused on additional effects and those beautiful landscapes. But FFA doesn't get a chance to use any of the A4O engine's pros, while we can clearly see how undetailed compared to other games it is.
And now, complete with the unpolished technical side comes the campaing… IG had a concept, interesting concept that on the paper might look good… But not in reality. The worlds are not fun to explore. On Ebaro and Markazia you usually go from point a to b and the 'additional path' usually mean you just enter that little building on the left, get the weapon and move along (eventually you have to jump across three moving platforms). There's just no fun in exploring these world, discovering them - not only because of how they're designed, but also because you're too busy fighting Grungarians everywhere. Besides, fighting a lot of enemies attacking the base means you just follow one with the Pyro Blaster and wait until it's defeated. It also doesn't help, that besides getting bigger and bigger, not much changes beetwen the worlds. Yeah, there are new enemy types, but fighting them in the Zurgo's lair is the exact same thing as fighting them in Markazia's planetary defense centre.
The competetive mode is fun but… It also seems unfinished. I mean, they make a game that's mostly centered around it and all they go with are three maps, max. 4 players and 1 MODE? I'm sorry, but this is really going below the standards of the series.
There's also the soundtrack. I'm a big fan of Bross' A4O soundtrack, it's probably the best of the cinematic scores in the series (yeah, better than ACiT and ItN), but the FFA… They should've hired David Bergeaud. Really, the music has "we're making a classic R&C OST" written all over it. The only problem is, it's not David Bergead, but Michael Bross trying to imitate David Bergeaud. And failing.
With that said, I don't mean everything about the game is bad. The multiplayer is fun, the control sheme is a step forward, TJ did a good job writing this game… It just seems so… unnecesarry. Like IG was trying to release something for the anniversary, thought of fun basis of the multiplayer mode and said "that's a way to go". The thing that annoys me most about this though is how much below the standards of the R&C games it goes, the series used to have such a strong attention to detail…