Let’s face it: Burnout 3: Takedown was one of the best racing games ever made, so to see EA and Criterion trying to continue that momentum just one year later is either pure genius on the developers’ part or sheer folly on the marketers’. Regardless, on September 13 EA will release Burnout Revenge, the latest in the series that tickled so many videogame racers’ fancy.
Had EA decided to fine-tune the online interface and stability and leave the rest of the game intact, the company would’ve made me completely happy and gotten my hard-earned money. But the company is doing a few things different with Burnout Revenge, things that in several instances change the gameplay in ways that would-be buyers will want to know about.
The changes all relate to the game’s new subtitle, “Revenge.” As the word implies, gamers are now encouraged, dare I say expected, to unleash all the road rage they’ve ever experienced. Naturally this means there’s even more focus on driving aggressively, but it also means that when gamers find themselves wrecked on the side of the road, they can get revenge through mid-race crashbreakers. This explosive feature was previously only available in the Geico-unfriendly crash mode. Now it’s available whenever players smash into a wall and want to take someone out with them. Sure, it makes for some nasty explosions, but it also provides extra “revenge” points that add to the total score at the end of each race.
Burnout Revenge also has much larger tracks than its predecessors, and although the graphics themselves don’t appear much better than Burnout 3: Takedown, the level of detail in each level is remarkable. One industrial track, for example, takes gamers from a run-of-the-mill boulevard through a series of underpasses and alleys, then blasts them through a construction site complete with girders, ramps and fenced-off areas. In other words, there are a lot more obstacles into which gamers can slam their opponents.
With the added level of detail, EA and Criterion have also boosted the number of routes in each track, both above and below ground. Above-ground ramps, underground tunnels and the formerly off-limits construction zones just beg gamers to burst through the fences and find new routes. If Burnout 3: Takedown defined high-speed mayhem, Burnout Revenge is raising the bar for most-destructive shortcuts.
The biggest change in Burnout Revenge, though, isn’t in the tracks or crashbreakers, but in the nature of the races themselves. Previous Burnout games were white-knuckle affairs not just because of the astounding sense of speed, but because one wrong move meant clipping an innocent bystander and careening into a wall. Unfortunately, EA’s newfound focus on revenge has taken some of that thrill away.
Burnout Revenge introduces a type of “traffic checking” (a la hockey) in which players can use the myriad get-out-of-my-way bystander cars as projectiles, ramming them into the “real” opponents to cause a fiery crash. Although this was also feasible in earlier Burnout games, such hyper-aggressive driving resulted in the gamer crashing as well, a logical consequence of driving into another car. But in Burnout Revenge, the car that does the ramming gets of Scot free, which takes away some of the thrill of weaving in and out of traffic. No longer do bystander cars pose a threat; they’re merely nuisances or potential weapons. From a revenge standpoint this is a great addition. But from a racing standpoint, it takes away some of the Burnout magic.
Some might argue that Burnout’s true magic is in its crash modes, and those people will be happy to hear that Burnout Revenge is as magical as ever. With multiple start points and vertically oriented tracks, the crash junctions in Burnout Revenge have become a claims adjustor’s worst nightmare. Couple that with new cars in the game’s three classes (race, muscle and crash), and you’ve got a recipe for controlled disaster.
Burnout Revenge hasn’t strayed too far from its roots, with explosive crashes still at the heart of what happens to be a great racing game. The newfound focus on revenge and road rage, though, has introduced some new gameplay mechanics, several of which may leave a few gamers feeling a little less enthused than they were with last year’s version. Still, come September 13, all Xbox and PS2 owners will be able to judge for themselves whether Burnout Revenge can hold its crown as best racing game of the year.
— Jonas Allen