Burnout Revenge

"Fun but flawed and leaving some to be desired"

Burnout is a wonderful series, a combination of modern ruthless competition to play dirty and get ahead, the sadistic human joy in mindless destruction, and the age of abundant fossil fuels and big hunks of metal on wheels moving really fricking fast.

Burnout Revenge has some good concepts, but falters in some areas, as well.

The races are more competitive and pleasing than Burnout 3, although occasionally frustrating. In Burnout 3, all you had to do is keep in first place (without using boost) and ward off competition from behind.. if you crashed, it usually meant you lost the race. In Burnout Revenge, you're expected to boost, drift, and take shortcuts to keep up with the pack of cars that are always faster than you in pure speed, and have no problems zooming ahead of you if you let them. If you crash, you can still recover your footing and end in first place.

The joy of the racing portion of the game is brought down severely in light of the two obnoxious tracks, Angel Valley and Eternal City. In Angel Valley, the designers added ludicrous amounts of traffic, mixed in with buses and semis. Combining the fact that plowing through a row of cars results in all but total blindness while driving, it's extremely frustrating to plow straight into a bus that you couldn't see and had no hope of avoiding. If that wasn't bad enough, the track features several (not one, but SEVERAL) rows of side-traffic that you instantly crash into by touching. It's completely luck based to be barreling down the street, only to head into an unavoidable collision with a side-moving car (which happens to be a much wider and less avoidable target than say an oncoming car or a truck/bus.) The narrow alleyway shortcut is completely useless, offering crashes on the nearly invisible dumpsters and side traffic that you literally get through un-scathed only with a roll of the dice. I'm all for legitimate track and traffic challenges, but this track is the most poorly made piece of dung I've ever had the displeasure to race on. The Eternal City track is a lesser offender, offering up claustrophobic passages with plenty of crash-prone edges and 90 degree turns mixed with frequent side and oncoming traffic exposures. Not completely unfair, but nowhere near fun.

Crash mode is still fairly fun. I'm disappointed that they removed crashbreaker icons, I wish the level 10 crashbreaker wasn't such a mash-fest, and I wish there were more levels and cars. Some of the levels are painfully annoying and pitiful (Circle of Strife), while some make good use of the new ability to bump off small same-way traffic (Intersection Dissection), and a few glorious ones allow you to obliterate 4-5 lanes at once (Noodles of Fun) or cause carnage in a small area (Cry for Alp). Still, I felt the high score medals for each one were a bit low. It's amusing that the hardest golds to get are still the "Burning Lap" times, which have almost nothing to do with ruthless competition or senseless destruction. The explosions are glorious, but I felt disappointed by Crash mode - I wanted to use a truck, or perhaps a Tuk-Tuk with a small nuke attached to it. I'm still waiting for the level cleverly named "Tuk vs. Truck". The 'golf swing' meter is useless.. I never found an instance where I wanted anything less than a 'perfect start'. Let's get a crash level editor going on here! I want to make my own carnage! Where's my unlockable car with a crashbreaker so big that the earth shakes in blind obliteration, and full sized buses are tossed about like confetti?

Anyway, the game is fairly good.. I got near 100% in about 20 hours playtime, so it's a fairly short play, but worth the eye candy and pleasure of a unique experience in video game destruction.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/07/05