Burnout

"A horribly mangled game spawned from a unique concept."

''DRIVING TO THE X-TREME!''

let me say this: anything to the X-treme feels like a gimmick to me. Burnout, what with its extreme sense of driving came off on me as only a gimmick. The whole game seemed to scream, ''I am one huge gameplay quirk.'' I rented it, was disappointed, and returned it.

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STORY
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''Who needs a story when you're racing?''

Racing games have notably less of a story than even fighting or sports games, so really this category is neglected. The basic premise is as follows: race in the middle of rush hour and beat the CPU. Doing crazy stunts will give you more points, and when you crash, get ready for a fantastic replay. Okay.

Burnout is one of those games that seems to suck you in with a new and interesting premise, and then kick you in the teeth with disappointment when you're close. While the idea of driving more recklessly than an Italian cab driver is an appealing one, the whole execution of this idea feels rushed, flawed, and disappointing.

Story: 8 / 10
Even I admit that a story in a racing game is superfluous, and it has a neat premise.

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GRAPHICS
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''Our true enemy has yet to reveal himself.''

Here's the start of where things begin to go somewhat bad. Although Burnout has a good capability to render lots of things at one time, the isolated character models offer little depth, detail, or variety. Cars and buildings and... well that's pretty much all there is to the game, they all seem to be flat and single-colored. Streets, without the cars, are bare and offer little interesting by way of details.

The cars are unlicensed, but you have a good idea of what real-life counterparts they're based on. Even the cars are pretty average looking, and far from any quality to be compared to Gran Turismo 3. In essence, everything is bland. However, the sheer amount of bland things that can be displayed onscreen at once is staggering, and they all seem to avoid the problem of the PS2's jagged edges for the most part.

Although some really like this feature, I find the game abuses lens flare and bright-light effects like there's no tomorrow. The game tends to have a ''photoshopped'' feel going out of a tunnel into daylight, or being in the direct path of the sun with scores of lens flares. Not my thing personally. I have little tolerance to seeing what might be an interesting effect over-abused.

In the same vein of beating a dead horse, Burnout rests its laurels on a ''spectacular crash-cam,'' which shows you a replay of any massive accident you may have caused. The crash effects are pretty well done, I must admit. The cars buckle at certain points, the windows crack into pieces, and the car will rotate depending on the angle of impact.

Really, you can tell a lot of time went into the crash graphics, and the slo-mo close ups really serve to illustrate this point. SMASHO! However, although the crashes are well done, they are somewhat predictable. Whole pieces of the car don't separate, and the glass falls predictably. Although they are the best in any game, there's still much to be desired, especially when there's a whole ''crash theatre'' dedicated to it.

I mean, they're good, but not that good. The effect is cool, but not good enough to watch all day as Burnout suggests (and fans of it, I might add). Again, it's a neat effect that feels like it draws more attention to itself than it should.

So really, the graphics have some good highlights, but suffer from gimmickry and being somewhat bland and relatively low-poly.

Graphics: 6 / 10
Lots of stuff, but relatively low-quality stuff loaded with gimmicks.

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GAMEPLAY
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''I don't mean to sound critical, but it's awful.''

The gameplay is perhaps the most flawed and horrific execution of an interesting concept I've seen in my years of gaming. It's just bad, and the way that it goes about trying to be ''fun'' is all wrong. So bad. So bad.

First thing's first: you gain more ''X-tremity'' from doing one of three things: driving in oncoming traffic, driving dangerously close to cars, and powersliding. These things fill up a bar which when filled, allows you to go X-tremely fast. Neat gimmick, huh? Again, the key word is ''Gimmick.''

First of all, the car selection screen is something interesting, as you have your choice of a truck, a Dodge Viper wannabe, a Toyota MR2 lookalike, and a Geo Metro, which is ironically the best car in the game. More cars can be unlocked, but I fail to see why they would add anything to a game plagued with problems as is.

The fundamentals don't work particularly well: driving in oncoming traffic always results in you being killed, as there are so many cars that as soon as you move out of the way there's a shiny new set of taillights or headlights there to smash into. Driving close to cars and swerving out of the way at the last minute rarely ever works, and usually also results in being hit by another car. Lastly, powersliding can only be done for short distances, and I have never found it to be anywhere near a level of responsive control or near any level of fun delivered by powerslides in games like ''Need for Speed III.'' Given that these are the only 3 ways to build your anemic ''Go real fast'' bar, they end up being more useless than a gameplay feature.

This might be largely because the degree of which your bar charges from being all X-treme and such is practically nil. Drive on the wrong side of the road for 30 seconds, it's only half to a quarter of the way full. This is about as long as I have ever lasted, be it in a Viper or a Metro, without crashing. Additionally, the worst idea to inflict a death-hold on the game is your ''X-treme'' bar resetting itself when you crash. All that bad driving for nothing.

In the cases where you get that damned bar somewhere near halfway after half a minute of flawless performance, you'll find yourself amazed at how well Burnout can simulate driving through red lights in traffic: a car you never saw before will pull out in front of you going about 40mph, and you'll crash into it or the car that you swerve into in order to avoid the first car. There are a lot of instances where a car literally comes out of nowhere within the context of the game, and the cross-traffic does not work well at all.
The real irony is that with the car this hard to control at the speed it goes normally, I can only guess that filling up the bar for a speed boost would rocket you twice as fast into pop-up cars. I hate the game regularly, so if it went twice as fast it would really suck, effectively doubling my chances for a crash.

To make things worse, winning a race never feels like a goal within reach: the CPU opponents never crash. I have not seen one CPU car hit a divider, another car, or even the cars that pull out in front of them at breakneck speed. Crash once, which is optimistic compared to the several times that you'll wipe out within a timespan of 2 minutes, and the CPU has already won. They go at top speed, always. I think my all-time best at Burnout was getting to third place, shortly before running a red light and totaling my car again. Sloppy.

There are a small amount of tracks beginning at the start of the game, and although more can be unlocked, the chore of doing so is really not worth it. The same goes with the extra cars. Hell, keep them. If the otherwise crappy Geo Metro is the best car in the game, the only thing that might be better than it would be a Chevy Nova or maybe an old Plymouth Valiant without a muffler and lacking a rear-view mirror. Extra points if one door is a different color than the rest of the car.

Even though the crashing does look good (the first few times you see it, anyway), the game goes to crash-cam every time you run into something. Playing the game for 10 seconds, and then seeing 5 seconds of yet another crash can be very infuriating. It takes the focus away from the bad racing, and shifts it to an inescapable ''sit back and enjoy'' mode that really delivers less and less enjoyment the more it occurs. I strongly dislike it, as again it's a gimmick that's being crammed down my throat like a spoonful of motor oil.

I can't stress how exceedingly bad, frustrating, and empty my experience with Burnout was, although I'm sure not going to go back and give it another chance after the horror that was the first rental. I burned my hand once; I'm not sticking it back into the flame.

Gameplay: 1 / 10
Not fun, irritating, unfairly stacked, and gimmicky. Need I say more?

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SOUND AND MUSIC
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''If you like our theme, you'll be pleased to know that there's a lot more of it.''

There's little appeal to my by way of any audio Burnout has. The crashes are generic, and the car sounds are fake. I can't get into the game as bad as this one on audio alone if the sounds are barely average. I wanted to hear the sound of broken glass bouncing on the pavement after my car flips over 3 times and screeches to a halt, but I got a pre-determined ''This is a crash'' effect, followed by ''The window has just broken'' effect. Not very immersive, I'll say that.

The music was either very generic techno, or the main theme which plays during the crash-theatre, options menu, and title screen. The main theme sounds like the bastard child of the James Bond theme, and I dislike that as well. Ugh. It wasn't poor in quality, but it burns into the recesses of my mind and lodges in there like David Koresh. It ain't coming out, and neither are the other traumatic memories of Burnout.

The sound and music is probably the most forgettable on the PS2 I've played yet, which is saying something. I didn't absolutely hate it, but I disliked it enough to allow it to further char the opinion I had formed of Burnout before I started thinking about how that stupid theme was beginning to get to me.

Sound and Music: 3 / 10
More generic than need be for this game, which really cuts some potential.

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OVERALL
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''I'm done with this. Take it back.''

Burnout is a definite rent, assuming that you've played everything else the PS2 has to offer. It's a bad game, and probably the worst yet on the PS2. The gameplay is absolutely atrocious, and it manages to make even the neat concept of reckless driving come off as boring and frustrating. What potential Burnout could have lived up to, it shrugs off in favor of becoming another lame driving game with nothing new to offer aside from over-abused gimmicks that don't seem to work.

The only saving grace of Burnout is the graphics, which although admittedly flat and nondescript showcase an ability to render a city full of cars in varying weather conditions. Although the individual pieces are only fair in quality, the big picture can be pretty impressive. That's the only positive thing I can think of.

Burnout demonstrates the ultimate fact that games that have good package design, a neat premise, and good publicity can indeed bite the big one. Stay away, just stay away.

Overall: 2 / 10
An awful game guilty of misleading you into thinking that it might be a cool one.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/02, Updated 02/18/02