Sure, taking out the fear of hitting some of the traffic makes the game less terrifying than past Burnout games, and the
Much of Burnout Revenge is an evolved or reworked version of Burnout 3, most evident in Burnout's most vital aspect – how you deal with traffic. In previous games, the traffic was an enemy, and the fear of rounding a corner and slamming into them was one of the things that made the game stand out from the pack – and in many ways, was a more dangerous opponent than the cars you race against. With Revenge, Criterion has made a sweeping change – letting you use the traffic as a weapon. As long as the car is reasonably sized and going the same direction as you, you can freely hit them, whether its to push them out of the way, or knock them into opponents as a method of taking them out, called 'checking' – think of a hockey check. In exchange, there's far more traffic this time around to deal with, making some courses overloaded with danger if you wind up slamming into a bus or a truck, or even oncoming traffic – which is still a no-no in Burnout's world. Right off the bat when you start the single player mode, World Tour, you're introduced to this reworked element with new game mode Traffic Attack, where the goal is to check as many cars as possible, before running out of time – seconds are added to the clock as you make contact, and more time is added if you use the smaller car to wipe out the larger vehicles.
Traffic checking also comes into play with the revamped Crash mode, which arguably has become the trademark of the franchise. Criterion took out the various pickups from Burnout 3, instead making the junctions far bigger and more complicated. There's even a Madden-esque launching system that is like kicking a field goal – a 3-click system sets your takeoff speed, and you actually have to take wind into effect, as cars will move around in the air if you hit a ramp, and cars have different weights so lighter cars will swerve a lot while heavy ones won't. Many of the junctions are quite tricky, and you'll probably have to retry them a few times to discover the right way to get a gold medal. Usually it involves the aforementioned checking. Because you can smash traffic going your way, it's easy to ram a car into cross traffic, causing a wreck there, while driving along to the next intersection to cause chaos on your own, in short creating multiple areas of destruction. There's even the ability to have multiple Crashbreakers this time around – if you can fill the damage meter to 100%. Different cars have different Crashbreaker force – little cars don't have much, but they can fly farther to other areas of the map, but heavier cars have catastrophic Crashbreakers, but don't travel as far during impact time. It's a lot more challenging than in previous games, requiring more strategy than ever before. If you have a Madden NFL 06 save, you can unlock the Madden Challenge van, which is usually a great option for tackling most of the junctions.
In general, the actual race formats haven't changed too much aside from the revenge factor. If an opponent takes you out, his icon turns red, signifying an enemy, and if you can return the favor, you get a special revenge takedown. It's not a big deal, but it adds some life to the opponents. All the takedowns from the past game return, and the courses are still designed for maximum violence against your opponents. However, the courses themselves have undergone a major overhaul, adding another wrinkle to the Burnout formula. In past games, while the track designs were great, they were always straightforward and linear. With Revenge, that's all changed – every course now features tons of shortcuts and alternate routes, though as you'd expect, these alternatives are usually very dangerous and risky for one reason or another, be it narrow pathways or crash-causing obstacles. They're not always shortcuts either; some might put you in worse position than you were before. Because you're usually traveling at very high speeds, Criterion marked them with shining blue lights – but even then, it's hard to spot them and immediately swerve their direction until you remember their locations the next lap. These make the biggest difference in the Burning Lap time trials, where you absolutely must use all the alternate routes and shortcuts if you want to get a gold.
Takedowns haven't changed much, aside from the new traffic check takedowns, and the new holy grail, vertical takedowns, which you get by landing on top of a car for instant destruction. It can be difficult to pull off but vertical takedowns are really impressive. Keeping with the theme of change, Road Rage, used in Burnout 3 as a demonstration of the takedown concept, has been altered slightly, with the addition of a time limit, that you can recharge by getting the required amount of takedowns. Road Rage is still as addictive as ever, though it can sometimes be very challenging because the AI is far more fierce this time around. In later Road Rage events (as well as Race and Eliminator modes), the Crashbreaker concept from Crash mode is brought into play, and it does what you'd expect – if you time it correctly while opponents are close, you can take out the entire pile of them with one press of the R2 button, for truly explosive payback, as well as instant revenge. Speaking of Eliminator mode; once done in a lap by lap format, where the car in last place after each lap would be knocked out, it's now done in a timer format, where every 30 seconds the last place car is eliminated. It adds a lot more tension to the event, since getting taken out right before the time expires could put you in last, and thus removed from the race.
Perhaps ironically, it's the standard Race mode, once Burnout's bread and butter, that's become the least interesting in light of all of Revenge's changes – though it's still something special. While the takedown concept was great, it almost seems like Criterion is taking it farther away from actual racing and instead more like demolition derby this time around. The fear of ramming traffic is minimized, since you can slam half of it around, and the opponent AI is almost more concerned with taking you out rather than winning, since it's too easy to win almost every race. You could be in 6th place with just a bit of the race to go and win because they're too busy knocking each other around rather than racing, letting you breeze by. That's not to say racing is not fun – it is, but it doesn't bring the same thrills as Burnout 3 did. The Crashbreaker-enabled races are much better, simply because it's fun to take out as many opponents as possible. On the other hand, the sense of speed is amazing – and with all the traffic on the screen this time around, it's even more stunning that it almost feels twice as fast as Takedown did. Unlike the 3rd game, there's no classes to worry about, instead, as you progress you unlock faster rides to bring to the party against equally-powered opponents. The difficulty curve is very solid, even though it falls mostly on the easy side. Like always, Burnout's control is spot on, letting you do powerslides and evasions with ease, though the takedown physics are a bit different this time around, as it's not as easy to just slam them into walls, you must do more frequently.
The World Tour mode brings in a ranking system for the first time, which factors in to your actual completion percentage. Each individual race carries a rating, from 'okay' to 'awesome' based upon how aggressive you drive. Spend lots of time ramming cars, getting takedowns, riding on the wrong side of the road, getting big air, causing maximum destruction in Crash events, etc. and your rating will skyrocket. Combined with the medals, you can get a maximum of 5 stars per event, and once you get a certain amount of stars, your overall rank increases, which doesn't mean a whole lot but it's something to shoot for. Just getting gold doesn't automatically mean a 5 star rating – instead, you can drive like a sissy, still get gold, and not get the full reward. The in-race rating can even go downwards if you've made it to a certain level, if you get in wrecks, drive around without boosting, and dodge traffic rather than check it. Ultimately it's useless but if you want 100% it's gotta be dealt with.
One of the most bizarre omissions is the lack of 'exhibition' races, which is a staple of basically every racing game ever made. You can't just choose an event, a car, and go out and race; the only single player events are in the World Tour. Sure you can replay events in the massive World Tour, but it would be nice to have the ability to set up a quick game of Road Rage using any car and track you desire, or any other combination. It's a huge disappointment on the part of Criterion to not include such a no-brainer feature. You'll never see Madden without exhibition games, kids. There is of course multiplayer (leaving that out would have been cause for riots), for up to 6 people both offline and online (with online carrying its own ranking system a la Project Gotham Racing 3), playing a multitude of events from pass-the-controller Crash, basic races, and Road Rage (which was king of Takedown's multiplayer, with the team concept). Last year, Burnout 3's online was atrocious, with constant errors and drops, but this year it's far more streamlined and user-friendly, and thus more playable via the PS2 network adaptor.
Regardless, Burnout Revenge is just as addicting as its forebear, and the whole 'one more event' mentality comes out a lot since everything is done in short bursts. I could do without the simplistic rubberband AI, but considering all the crashing and battling, it's almost required to keep you in a race, though at the same time there's no punishment for making too many errors aside from Road Rage since eventually you can ruin your car. With over 150 events in World Tour, there's tons to do and see, and getting perfects on every event becomes an obsession – if you're anything like me you'll replay events over and over until you get both a gold medal and an 'awesome' aggression rating for the maximum rewards, and think of nothing but that achievement – no moving on to other events until you've gotten the best rank. That's why, despite Burnout Revenge's minute missteps, it's still one of the best arcade racing games in the business – that crack-like addiction is hard to put down until you've done everything possible.
Visually Revenge looks much like its predecessor, only ramped up another notch. As mentioned, the sense of speed is amazing, and with the dozens upon dozens of cars floating around each track, it's equally amazing that there's no slowdown and it runs at a very high frame rate. That said it can almost be too fast, requiring Jedi-like abilities to navigate courses for the first time, since turns and alternate routes come and go so fast...and it's not a game where you can gaze at the scenery unless you want to crash into the scenery. If you do have time to notice, you can see the special effects like sparks when you're riding a wall or ramming into stuff (though watching the cars you check fly around like it was made of cardboard is kind of silly). The locales vary, be it the woods-like Lone Peak to the gritty, urban Motor City, and everywhere inbetween – lots of variety. The Crash events look as brutal as you'd imagine, with cars slamming into each other extremely hard for maximum chaos. Car designs are not as varied as Takedown, but they all look really good, especially the pre-destroyed Crash vehicles that look like demolition derby machines. Revenge definitely pushes the PS2 hardware to its limits, just like Takedown did a year ago.
Last year EA brought its Trax to Burnout, and was met with mixed reaction, as Takedown featured a lot of pop-punk, nu metal, and emo music that tended to fit the atmosphere but yet could have been better (it did have This Fire by Franz Ferdinand though, which counts for something). This year, EA has gone indie, as a lot of the bands included aren't very well known, the inclusions of Maximo Park and Bloc Party the high points (Helicopter is an awesome tune), though it does include some garbage like Yellowcard. Like Need for Speed Underground 2, there's even a Doors song included on here – though this time it's not a bad version of Riders on the Storm, but instead a remix of Break on Through (To the Other Side). In terms of sound effects, Revenge is very high quality – the sounds of cars being smashed, gears shifting, sliding around corners...it's all done extremely well, better than a great many racing games out there. Most importantly, EA and Criteron removed Striker, the single most annoying DJ in the history of the world – no more of his blabbering between songs or during the introduction videos, which now feature a sultry female and can be skipped if you're not a Burnout nub.
Without a doubt, Burnout Revenge is yet another awesome entry into this franchise, though it doesn't quite match the impact that Burnout 3 did – though that would have been a tall, tall order considering the high praise it received from all corners of gaming. Rather than resting on their laurels and delivering your usual EA cash-in, Criteron made sure to spend the year taking Takedown's core and make it feel fresh without taking away what made the game so beloved. Sure, taking out the fear of hitting some of the traffic makes the game less terrifying than past Burnout games, and the increased emphasis on taking out opposition rather than merely outracing them might be too much for some die-hards to handle, but as you get used to it, the magic is still there...though it makes going back and playing the past games a bit strange without the ability to check other cars. On its own though, Burnout Revenge is another classic, and thanks to EA's missteps with the Need for Speed franchise, it has become their cornerstone racing series – regardless of sales. Let's hope Criterion doesn't fall into the NFS trap on the next generation hardware, and keep Burnout the way it is – simple, yet ferocious, thrilling, and intense.