Burnout Revenge

"Plenty of Improvements, But a Few New Disappointments"

Burnout 3: Takedown was one of my favorite racing games when I bought it last summer. Oddly enough, I waited until just a week ago to purchase the fourth game in the series, Burnout: Revenge. Does it retain the sense of speed and highly addictive gameplay that made Takedown so much fun? Yes, thankfully. It doesn't come out flawless, but if a few things were ironed out, it could have.

-Graphics: The game manages to look even more amazing than Burnout 3. Environments are just plain gorgeous, and the color palette is varied and highly appealing, even in dirty, grungy levels like Motor City. Framerates stay at a consistent 60 frames per second, aside from in 2-player mode and Crash mode (more on that below). Dynamic lighting, high detail in the buildings that you zip by, nice car design, and cool crash debris only enhance the already slick package.

The interface for World Tour mode is slightly different, too. Instead of rotating the globe to pick new events, the events are simply lined up from 1-10. This is far more intuitive, and it's much faster to go through the menus.

-Sound: As with Burnout 3, the soundtrack consists mostly of hard rock tunes, as well as a little techno. While not all songs are winners, there are quite a few highlights in here, like the electronic-heavy "An Honest Mistake", a 21st century remix of "Break on Through (to the Other Side)", the upbeat "Do What You Want" (which has played in some TV commercials), punk song "Red Flag" from the Canadian band Billy Talent, and "Ink".

A plus is that Burnout Revenge lacks a DJ during gameplay; all you'll hear are the radio songs. While Stryker wasn't too annoying from Burnout 3, he wasn't entirely necessary aside from atmosphere, I guess. There IS a female announcer, but she's only present in introductory cinemas.

-Controls: As you may know, the Burnout series definitely leans towards the arcade style of racing games, as opposed to something realistic like Gran Turismo. This isn't a problem at all; in fact, the tight, super responsive controls, even when you're zooming through courses at upwards of 130 MPH, give you quite a rush. It should be noted that unlike the PS2 version, acceleration and braking are done with the trigger buttons as opposed to the surface buttons. Boosting is accomplished with the A button. This takes a second to get used to if you're used to PS2 controls, but it's still very easy to manage.

One new control in this game is the ability to use crashbreakers in mid-race, not just in Crash events. Obviously, you have to have crashed first, but if you aim your exploded vehicle just right, you can take out rival cars coming up behind you. It's quite satisfying to see "Aftertouch Takedown!", especially when you wreck multiple rival cars at once.

-Gameplay: Much like Burnout 3, the game has a World Tour mode. Races, Grand Prix races, and Elimination mode are self-explanatory, and are the same as Burnout 3. Burning Lap is, as the name suggests, a speed run around a course. To get the gold you pretty much have to make zero mistakes and boost constantly. With heavy traffic and sharp turns, not to mention the ever-present threat of pillars or poles cutting into a road when you least expect it, this mode is harder than it seems.

Road Rage is similar to the previous game as well; you have to crash as many opponent cars as you can, whether by ramming them into walls or oncoming traffic. If you crash your own car too many times (I believe five or six), your car is totaled and you can't continue. That adds some strategy to the mode, since you have to be both careful and aggressive at the same time, and as such it's pretty fun.

The biggest change in this installment is that running into the backside of a car or small truck doesn't automatically wreck you. Instead, you get points and boost for ramming them. Heck, they made an entire game mode out of it: Traffic Attack, where you ram as many cars before time runs out (ramming earns you more time), and it's arguably the most fun new mode. Slamming into the rear of literally hundreds of cars is pure fun. One rather annoying aspect of ramming, however, is that you can't ram large vehicles like semis or buses; you'll crash in those cases. While quite reasonable in theory, there were many times when I would be ramming tons of cars on a freeway and would slam into a semi because all the sparks from the previous rams were getting in the way and obstructing my view. So just be aware that just because you can zoom through traffic doesn't mean that you can butt everyone out of your way; you have to be a little careful.

Crash manages to be even more annoying in this installment. True, it's easier to tell how much cash you've accumulated before the time expires. And yes, the revised method of crashbreaking, where you have to cause enough damage to fill up a meter, makes more sense. But three major flaws drag it down: For some odd reason this mode is only 30 frames per second as opposed to 60. Many times it even drops well below 30, because the slowdown from the massive amount of car crashes really takes its toll. I swear, sometimes after a crashbreaker my car must've been in the air for a good eight seconds because of how slow the game was moving.

Flaw two: It's not really a "flaw", per se, but it's still irritating: To begin races now, you have to charge the car by tapping the A button repeatedly. It'd be much easier to just hold accelerate like most any other race. There were plenty of times when I'd restart the race a lot of times within one minute because my initial blast off wasn't as fast as I'd hoped, and it's really difficult to get the timing just right.

The final flaw is that if you decide to retry, the game does this long pullback to the start of the level, instead of just taking you back to the start instantly. And you can't skip past these, either, so you have to watch the camera slowly wind its way back to the start, and if you retry these events a lot, be prepared for a lot of sitting and waiting. As with Burnout 3, this was my least favorite mode in the game, and since the environments seemed recycled during the numerous Crash events, I felt like I was experiencing deja vu.

-Overall: If you want a lightning fast racing game with a variety of different events amidst the racing, Burnout: Revenge may be for you. Aside from Crash events, I had a great deal of fun playing it, and even five days of playing the game only got me 60% through World Tour mode, which shows you how much content is in here, and how hard it is to get Gold on many events. With a wide array of vehicles to unlock, the game stays addicting. You'll be saying "Just one more race!" as you progress through World Tour mode, with all the bonuses that you get... if you're good enough. Now that Burnout: Revenge is only $20, there's no better time to get in on the turbo-charged action.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/06