Burnout Revenge, with it's amazing graphics and super sharp gameplay, is a blast for anyone with a heart-beat.
Burnout Revenge is more than just the yearly update you might expect from an EA-published game. While the basic gameplay mechanics haven’t changed – you still have to drive fast, takedown competitors and generally drive with the same level of awareness and common social decency as found at a hen night party – the tone of the game has changed somewhat, taking an even more belligerent stance towards vehicular mayhem.
Where Takedown struck you with its speed and combat, Revenge sucker-punches you with its focus on twisted metal and total disregard for innocent road users. No longer is every bit of traffic capable of sending you to hell in your high-speed metal coffin, with all but the largest vehicles smacked and bounced around like zombified civilian projectiles, batting traffic and enemy racers out of the way. Only same way traffic, mind: slam into anything on the other side of the road and you’ll be roadkill.
It takes time for experienced Burnout players to warm to the idea that it’s now possible to actually hit civilian vehicles, but once that realisation has settled it’s like discovering a great game all over again. No longer will you be able to play Burnout 3: Takedown without hitting everything, and suddenly Legends will become an incredibly difficult game. Getting your own back does, sadly, have its drawbacks.
The aggression in the game clearly could be the most dangerous thing to the franchise. Rather than challenging the player to narrowly avoid everything at all costs, you’re left with the option of either racing hard and fast on the wrong side of the road, or simply taking the easy route and bashing the same-way traffic for boost. By changing such a fundamental part of the game, Criterion have fashioned a divisive factor into Revenge, which will no doubt split the fan-base before a new title in the franchise hits the shelves.
However, forgoing deep discussion into the pros and cons of the switch to more aggressive driving, the changes really do make a big difference to many of the game modes, such as normal racing and the souped-up eliminator mode, which now takes out the last-placed driver every 30 seconds, rather than every lap. Eliminator is no longer a slow, boring race mode, having been substituted with this desperate and frantic battle to constantly beat both clock and competitor.
The new traffic attack mode is a particular highlight, sitting pretty alongside Road Rage as a wonderful experiment in stress relief. Simply smash into the same-way traffic and cause chaos to earn cash and more time for survival against a twenty second countdown clock that’s not kind to those who don’t cause carnage on the highways. Many races and eliminator modes now include the ability to do a crash-breaker once you’ve taken out or crashed, and those who’ve taken you out become marked targets that give you rewards for taking your revenge.
Even though it doesn’t seem possible, Revenge also looks better and faster than Takedown. Somehow, Criterion have managed to push both the PS2 and Xbox for all their worth even more this time around, especially with NPC vehicles flying around the screen. The famous Crash Mode also looks better than ever, with awesome explosions and multiple crash-breakers lighting up the junctions you reign destruction upon. It's even more beautiful then fiding an Oreo in you're morning bowl of Cherios.
However, some parts of the game aren’t exactly wonderful. PS2 owners don’t have the luxury of Custom Soundtracks, for the soundtrack certainly won’t become a gaming classic, and the menu in the single-player isn't as "intuitive" as you wanted it to be. And then there’s the aggression: traffic checking has the unfortunate side effect of making the game much, much easier, and might end up not being played quite as much as other games in the series as a consequence.
But Revenge is still an incredible amount of fun to play, remaining so similar to previous titles yet being so fundamentally different. Burnout Revenge is in my eyes a new high for Burnout and a game that’s destined to be a massive success for Criterion’s series, but the developers will have a tough challenge in the years ahead to keep it fresh and new without making more changes to the way the game plays. In the meantime though, televisions worldwide should be ringing to the sounds of twisting metal and horrifically hilarious car crashes.