"One of Sonic Team's best, right before Saturn left us."

To this day, I believe this is one of Sonic Team's finest games, and one of the many reasons I still play my Saturn daily. Let's start with the review, shall we?

To start, I'll talk about the obvious: the graphics. Burning Rangers takes the NiGHTS engine to some new areas. While NiGHTS took place in incredibly beautiful dream (and nightmare) worlds, Burning Rangers takes place in a technologically advanced future. While Burning Rangers looks excellent, it is arguable that it matches up to the visual splendor of NiGHTS. The first thing one will notice is the frame rate, which is not as smooth as NiGHTS. I'm not one to guess accurately, but I'd say that Rangers manages a constant framerate somewhere between 15-20. Also, there is a decent amount of pop-up and clipping that can be annoying at times. Once one looks past that, however, they will see the incredible colored lighting, decent (fake) transparency effects, great scenery, and nice character models. Aside from the small nuances, this is one of the best looking games on Sega's big black box.

Next up is the audio. The sound effects are of the standard fare, explosions, shots, and the like. Also, the game contains plenty of voice samples from the characters. The voice acting is average, at best. Tillis has the current standing of highest-pitched voice for a game character (right up their with Navi), and then there is the cocky ''Lead'' (although they call him ''Read''), the veteran Big, and the navigator Chris. Along with these are the rather strange conversations between survivors and the Rangers, which aren't that bad, really.

Now, the most important aspect of any game, the gameplay. This game shows off Sonic Team's genius as well as any of their other great titles. You play as one of the Burning Rangers, a squad of futuristic firefighters. The basic gameplay as follows: Collect crystals, rescue survivors, put out fires, and fight bosses and other baddies. By putting out fires, you earn crystals. These crystals can be thought of as the rings in Sonic games. When your character gets damaged, they loose their crystals. If they get damaged while holding no crystals, they die. Also, you use these crystals as a source of energy to transport the survivors to safety. Another factor in the game is the limit meter. When explosions happen and fires start, the limit meter will rise. At every 20% increment, there will be a large amount of explosions and general chaos as a sort of punishment. In order to keep this from happening, you must put out fires, activate switches, and rescue survivors. Once a 20% increment happens, however, you can't lower the limit back below it. If you are unfortunate enough to have the meter reach 100%, well, never stop moving. Also, the control in the game is spot-on, allowing your character to quickly dodge explosions, put out fires, and navigate the halls using their incredibly cool-lookin jet-suits. The only real complaint I had with gameplay would be the lack of combat against non-fire entities in the first three levels. Honestly, this doesn't matter that much.

Now, one might think that with four levels, this is one short game. Well, if you play it, beat it, and put it away, you would be. But this game is truly meant to be played and played and played for score, much like NiGHTS or Crazy Taxi. Also, after completing the game, the levels have randomly generated elements. These elements don't change the levels that much, but can sometimes lead to some memorable events. Finally, after rescuing survivors, you will receive thank you emails from them, and you get a reward for rescuing ALL of them (no easy task, mind you...)

And that's that. This is one of the greatest games on the Saturn, and if you are without this game, you should go pick it up as soon as possible!

Graphics: 9.0
Sound: 8.3
Gameplay: 9.7
Replay Value: 9.5

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/01, Updated 06/23/01