Revenge is sweet!!!
The original Burnout came out in 2001 and was an arcade racer that was all about driving really really fast while avoiding all the other traffic. Despite the luke warm reviews the game still sold well. Burnout Revenge is the third sequal to Burnout and not only is it better then the mediocre first two, but it's also better then last year's awesome Burnout 3: Takedown which was easily my favorite driving game to date. Burnout Revenge may not reinvent the genre like it's predecessor did but the changes here are big enough to make it recomendable both to newcomers and long time fans of the series.
Graphics: 9/10
The graphics in this game are very impressive indeed. There are a lot more explosions going on this time. There's more traffic flying all over the place thanks to the new traffic checking feature and everything just looks better. The environments are more destructable this time, there's shortcuts which will have cars flying in and out of them and the game still runs at 60 frames per second with no noticible slowdown. The presentation in the game is excellent as well thanks to a simple menu system, intuitive heads up display and some real real nice looking effects such as when you get a revenge takedown the screen goes all red and you get to watch your rival blow up while the text saying 'Revenge Takedown' appears across the center of your screen.
Just about the only thing bringing down the graphics are the minor clipping detection errors such as the infamous "Gray Hell" where you basically fall through the level and eventually respawn going 0mph. Another rather annoying bug I noticed was in crash mode when you use a crashbreaker and land on top of a bus the bus starts sinking through the level until it eventually disappears.
Sound: 10/10
With Striker gone there's not much to complain about on the audio side of things. The woman who handles the announcing this time doesn't actually say much throughout the course of the game but what she does say is very well done. The voice works well with the graphics and other presentational effects to create a feeling of excitement by just watching the opening video.
The soundtrack is worthy of mention too because it's awesome. It may not be the music you'll want to put on your I-Pod or PSP but it fits the theme of the game better then the soundtrack in Burnout 3 would have. The highlights of the soundtrack includes Yellowcard's Lights and Sounds, Billy Talent's Red Flag, Starting Line's The World and Outline's Shotgun.
The effects are great too with a nice array of woosh and crash sounds. Another nice part of the audio presentation is the crowd who will cheer or boo you as you perform well or poorly in each crash event. Not much else to say about the audio really except that with no Striker there isn't much to complain about.
Gameplay: 10/10
Burnout has always been about driving as fast as possible while avoiding all the other traffic in the game. Revenge is more or less in the same league but here you can slam into the traffic as long as they're going in the same direction as you are and they aren't huge busses or semi's. This mechanic has even been spun into it's own game mode called traffic attack.
Other then that the races play just like they did in Takedown and speaking of takedown's two new types have been added this year. First is the traffic check takedown's which are exactly what they sound like you slam a vehicle into your rival. The other new type of takedown is the vertical takedown. The tracks in Revenge all feature some type of alternate path. Some of these are shortcuts and others are merely side ramps which put you back onto the main track so you can hopefully land on top of one of your opponents getting a vertical takedown. There's also the explosive paybacks where you explode your car by hitting a button and dragging your rivals into your crashbreaker. It's a nice addition to the game and it's balanced quite well since you lose all your boost if your crashbreaker doesn't hit anybody.
While the new stuff is not drastic but cool crash mode has completely reinvented itself. Changes are too many to list here but the big ones include the boost meter at the start which works kind of like the swing meter in a golf game or the drag racing meter in Need for Speed Underground. Next is that crashbreakers are no longer determined by the number of cars you drag into your wreck but by how much damage you cause. For instance bigger cars equals bigger damage. The other change is that the powerups are gone and instead your multiplier is determined by the number of cars you explode not just set on fire but actually explode. Also you can get multiple crashbreakers in one run if your wreck is that big that you drag that many cars into your pileup. The crash junctions are also a lot more complex this time around but not neccesarily harder. Lastly is the target car which is a vehicle that you must drag into your pileup at all costs. It is worth a lot of money and it explodes the second it touches your wreck.
Online over Xbox Live the game supports six players in both the race and the crash modes. The multiplayer itself actually feels a little stipped down only offering 5 modes of play out of the box but perhaps more will be added later. The menu system is also much better about pairing you up with similarly ranked players and it's also easier then ever to play with your friends due to the new party system which works exactly like it does in Halo 2. Also like in Halo 2 you have a progression level which raises based on how well you place in your online events. This determines what tracks you can play on when you host your own game. Each car in the game also has a rank assigned to it and you can set it to restrict certain ranks of cars. Online the cars don't seem to be arranged in any paticular order so it's hard to know what restriction the host has set and figuring out OK is my car in here so it would have been nice if the game showed you the rank of each car in it's stats. Once you can get a game going EA's servers handle everything for the most part pretty well however we occasionally had some pretty crazy stuff happening. First off if someone's lagging then the game doesn't slow down it speeds up making it almost impossible to drive on some courses like White Mountain where traffic is dense and corners are really tight. Also I had a problem where I couldn't connect to the players in the room even though I could hear them talking to me.
Conclusion: 9.9/10
Burnout Revenge features a lengthy tour mode (40-60 hours by the time you get 100% completion) as well as a fully featured multiplayer mode complete with split screen game types and online modes. Burnout vets may not appreciate the direction this series is heading (more about combat then about dodging the traffic) but even with the traffic checking the game is still somewhat challenging and fans of Burnout 3 will definetly get their money's worth with Burnout Revenge. This is simply the best racing game ever and is one of the best games on the Xbox. If you were to only get one more game this year it may as well be Burnout Revenge since even with Xbox 360 coming in about 5 weeks I see myself easily spending more time with this game then I will with Perfect Dark Zero.