Not many racing games come along with that pure adrenalyn rush quite like Burnout does. And no game got a bigger facelift before it's release than Burnout did when EA bought the rights away from now defunct Acclaim before releasing Burnout 3. Most people know that we really liked and respected Acclaim for what it did in the gaming industry while it was around. But playing Burnout 3 brought about the reality of why Acclaim is no longer around. But that's a debate for another day. So after Burnout 3 tore up the racing genre and become one of the top racing games of last year, how would EA and veteran developer Criterion possibly get any better? The answer is right here in front of you; Burnout Revenge, the next in line in the acclaimed series. It's much more than just new cars and tracks. It's an experience that only Burnout can bring you. It is by far one of the best arcade racing games on the market today, and you're about to see why. Pretty much all of the various game modes and races from Burnout 3: Takedown have returned for a little Revenge. But they have all been upgraded! The World Tour mode, which is the career mode of the game, has undergone a pretty major overhaul as well. For starters, the car classes are gone and replaced by driver ranking. This is how it works. Every race you run now has a ranking meter. It goes from "Ok" to "Awesome". Each race rank comes with a number of stars, from one to four. After the race, stars are added or subtracted depending on how you place. After you get so many stars, your driving rank rises. You go from unsafe to reckless to offensive and beyond. Everytime you raise up a driver rank you unlock new races, cars, and locations. It's crazy, but it's damn fun. And you need to play it if you're going to unlock enough to make the multiplayer fun. And multiplayer is even more fun than playing by yourself against the computer. Especially because Burnout Revenge as you probably guessed is online for the PS2 and Xbox just as Burnout 3 was. Of course you can also do split screen and party-style multiplayer too. But online is where it's at! Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with the Burnout series, let me fill you in. Here is Burnout's gameplay in a nutshell: Gas, brake, steer, boost, smash other cars into things. That's it. No transmission or gearshifting, no handbraking, no complicated car setups. It's just you, your sled, and everyone else. Now that is not to to say you can't do some minor tricks like drifting around a corner or catching a little air. But the power behind the game is in two areas. One of which is the "Burnout" boost. Driving offensive by skimming by cars, getting air, powersliding around turns (called drifting), and driving in oncoming traffic fills a Burnout meter. Once you fill the meter, it's like having NOS (Nitrous Oxide) baby. Hit the boost and you will see the screen morph into pure speed. Now unlike previous games, the amount of boost you get to use is also affected by how well you can stay in one piece. Crashing other people's cars is one of your other main goals. In each game, no matter if it was a regular race or not, you got points for running your opponents off the road. And I mean off the road! That's what they call a "Takedown". The more takedowns you do on your opponents, the more points you will receive. The more points you receive, the more cars and events and awards you are going to unlock. Sounds like fun eh? Well in Burnout Revenge, there are some brand new Takedowns and fun things. Let's start with the reason the game is called Burnout Revenge. Along with the standard Takedowns you have the return of the Revenge Takedowns, which was in the last game. Remember your opponents will be just as eager to slam you into a wall too. If someone takes you down, if and when you catch back up to them they'll have a red icon above their car. If you taken them back down you'll get extra points for a Revenge Takedown. Ahhh, but that's not all. This year you are able to use traffic to take down your opponents. As long as you don't slam into an oncoming mack truck or something substantially bigger than your own car, you can slam that vehicle into your opponent and get not just Takedown, but a Traffic Check Takedown. This comes in handy too in other races, like the Traffic Attack. In Traffic Attack you have to just keep checking cars in front of you until you run out of time. One final new control that has been updated is an extention of a feature from Burnout 3, called Aftertouch. While crashing you hold the aftertouch button, and the whole game slows down. During that time you can use the left analog stick to actually steer your car in midair! What this is good for is trying to then steer your wreck into an opponents car causing HIM to wreck too for an Aftertouch Takedown. But added to that, you now have what is called a Crashbreaker. Crashbreakers are earned as your ranking goes up. When you get it, it can change a race very quick. Just when your opponent thinks he got the best of you, you can hit a button and blow your car up.........right next to them. So them taking you out can actually take them out too. Before we go on, I have got to tell you just how much better the tracks are than they have been with any other Burnout game. In fact, these track designs are really as good as any racing game I've seen recently. Lots of shortcuts, jumps, track objects to run into and run your opponents into. The locations aren't real cities or anything, but they are some neat locales; from city streets to back alleys, up mountain sides or through a metropolis. And the speed is incredible. The vehicles as you can imagine are not real. There's no way with the amount of damage and reckless driving you do in the game that any car manufacturer would put their name on a car. But that's fine, because you can still tell what style of vehicle it is, and they do have different attributes. The lighter the car, the less grip it has on the road, but the faster it goes. And vice-versa. Other games have been upgraded too. One of my favorite games in Burnout 3 was Crash Junction, where you basically took your car and barrel into a busy intersection hoping to inflict as much twisted metal carnage as you can before the timer went down. Burnout Revenge really takes that mini-game to a new level! First, each car has a different weight, which will make slamming into the side of a bus different depending on what you use. The heavier the car.....well you know. The new crash designs are awesome! Jumps and curves, and some of the new "tracks" actually have multiple levels where you can rack up even more damage! And to add to the fun you can check cars into other vehicles to start the chain reaction of massive crashing before you even get to the final destination. In the last game you had boost tokens that sped you towards the oncoming twisted metal party. But in Revenge, it's a little different. Before you go shooting down the road, you now have a boost meter you have to hit just right. The meter has two green areas, one at the top, one at the bottom. Don't hit it right, and you could either blow your engine, or you won't get any boost which can seriously effect your score and ranking. At first I hated the meter, until I got used to it. Now I can hit perfect boosts on every shot. And I like it a lot better than trying to catch a token. One more thing, remember the crashbreaker? Remember how you can use it to blow up more cars after you have crashed yourself? Well in the new crash mode your crashbreaker builds up in it's own meter as more cars smash into each other thanks to you. Each car also has it's own crashbreaker level. Some cars blow up better than others. And if the carnage keeps going, your crashbreaker meter will fill up again. You can actually have more than one now. And crashbreakers can do much more than you think, especially with the multi-tiered levels. You can knock out stuff up top, then blast yourself into the air and come crashing down on another set of vehicles down below. That is very cool. Finally, a quick word about online gaming. Online is really what brought Burnout 3 from just another arcade racing game to the powerhouse it has become. Acclaim never got this, and to be honest if they had made Burnout 2 online, they might not have lost the series. But EA understood, and so did Criterion. Now when racing online, you can also unlock new events by winning races. But you have a totally seperate ranking system which is different than your World Tour ranking. In fact, you have to level up in order to unlock new cars to use online! Even though you unlock stuff in the World Tour, you have to start all over online. And the easiest way to raise in rank is to win races against people around your own ranking. Then as you get better you can start challenging people better. It's like having a whole new So online you can do standard races, road rage, and an assortment of Crash mini-games. I have to say kudos to Criterion for not tying the online multiplayer mode to what you do offline. This is the type of game I would much rather play online with friends than by myself or even split screen. Although I gotta say that split screen, Dan Comer (our PC guy) and I can spend a couple hours on this game easy. And we have. Take Burnout 3, jack it up, add some new incredible special effects and cutaways, and blistering speed. That's Burnout Revenge. I have never seen so much done with Renderware before. Burnout was always outright hot looking. Even back in it's original days. Burnout 3 of course was a step up from that. But Burnout Revenge really almost takes a full running leap in quality; especially when you see it on the Xbox. Don't get me wrong, the Playstation 2 version is right there as far as overall quality, but as usual the Xbox version is a bit crisper, a bit smoother. But they both have true 480p Progressive Scan compatibility, which is a plus for the Playstation 2. But in general, Burnout Revenge very much smacks you right in the face with the sheer horsepower the graphics engine puts out. From top to bottom the game is gorgeous, with photo-realistic backgrounds and tons of objects and details on the tracks. While there are no "real-world" locations in the game you can get a sense for where you are. And the vehicles! Even though they are generic they are very well designed and the damage they take is just as good as any of the rally car racers I've seen. That leads me to special effects, which blow you away too. Everything from that wild blurry look as you go flying down the road with your nitros blasting to the slo-mo camera of one of your opponents flying though the air heading for a nasty landing, or a pyling. If your bumper is dragging off the back of your car it sparks on the road behind you. Same if you get nudged or if you nudge another car against the side. And the game just doesn't stop giving it all to you. The sense of speed in the game is so fast that all the rest of this is enough to make you dizzy. It's an awesome looking game, flat out. Just think of what the next generation is going to be like. Mmmmmmmmmmm. On the audio end I once again say thanks to EA for letting gamers add custom soundtracks to the Xbox version. I know EA takes pride in their music selection, and that is cool. And there are some sweet tunes in this game including a remix of The Doors, But I have a very different music taste than I get behind the wheel and I am glad to see I can choose my own tunes. Also as usual extra point goes to the Xbox version for full Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, where you can actually hear what side of your car an opponent is coming up on. The Playstation 2 comes in a close second with Dolby Pro Logic II support, but there used to be a time when EA PS2 games came with DTS.
Burnout Revenge has a more darker look to it compared to last years Burnout. The gameplay has not really improved a whole lot like the difference between Burnout 2 to 3. There are some new features which are great. The m... Read Full Review
Ok this game was so much better then I thought it would be and I thought this game would be great but it is freaking sick.Well I loved the road rage in Burnout:3 Takedown but the road rage in Burnout Revenge is even bett... Read Full Review
