Burnout Review

Burnout pits you against three other racers in a street race over a set amount of laps, the only problem is nobody blocked off the roads and so youâve got to avoid literally hundreds of pedestrian traffic. Straightforward yes, does it bring any new ideas to the genre no, however when a racing title generates as much excitement as this one does, you know itâs a good thing. 

To be good at Burnout youâve got to drive fast, very fast, and try not to crash even though they do look spectacular, however the true secret to mastering Burnout is building up your boost bar and knowing when to use this properly. The boost bar increases when you perform certain things, such as driving against oncoming traffic, powersliding and near misses, when the bar is full you can activate the boost and literally achieve warp speed, just donât blink!!!



When you do crash youâre greeted with mini re-plays of the crash, and then thrown straight back into the action. This caused a fair amount of disagreement in the office, with some claiming that it broke up the play, well yes but remember what happened when you crashed in Outrun, a little animation showed the guy and gal falling out of the car which then exploded, itâs the same thing⦠



In fact comparing Burnout to Outrun and other old school racers is a good one; itâs you against the clock and all of the other pedestrian traffic. Burnout is an arcade title; the controls and physics ditch realism for OTT powerslides and ludicrously fast sense of speed. It doesnât take long before your powersliding round corners, nipping in between cars, and shouting out F*ck Me as you miss an artic by inches. Youâll need the reactions of a cat to survive in Burnout, and thankfully the controls are responsive enough to match.

This accessibility is needed however, as the opposition you face have a relentless thirst for being first, theyâll frequently change lanes and try to ditch you into ongoing traffic, if you want to win youâre going to have to drive like a crazed maniac as well, as the old saying goes âIf you canât beat em, ditch emâ. Fortunately your opponents arenât faultless and will crash, giving you time to catch up, the sense is that the race is never over until you cross that finishing line, ensuring that each race keeps up the intense level of exhilaration.



The game has five primary courses, which are divided up into 16 different tracks and distributed into 6 different championships. Each course has had the most intense attention paid to every little detail, to ensure the action and the playerâs interest are always kept to a high. Powersliding around a corner into a straight, whilst trying to avoid all of the traffic is a driving joy up there with the best, for example the first level sees you beautifully re-joining the freeway, forget slowing down just race on there and hope there isnât any traffic in the slow lane! 



One surprising element is the length of each course, theyâre absolutely huge, Criterion has done an excellent job of streaming the data off the PS2 in order to display the busy environments. 

Other than the Championship, Single Race and Time Attack, there is a very nifty 2P mode. Burnout proves to be one of the best multi-player racing titles in quite a while, the sense of satisfaction you get from ditching your opponent into the traffic is immense. Whilst there is a little loss in detail, there is no loss in speed or the amount of pedestrian traffic, well-done Criterion. 



Other modes include; Survival â“ Race without crashing otherwise its game over; Face Off â“ Collect cars beating a one-off opponent; Free Run â“ Pits you against 3 opponents without the traffic, rather pointless.



Visually everything looks a little rough around the edges, but youâll be racing too fast too notice that, and when you consider how much is going on you canât complain. However the sense of speed is unbelievable, how Criterion managed to get such a silky framerate with so much going on is unbelievable to me.

Unfortunately the sound never really gets you going in the way it should,
it's a little too dramatic and theatrical and could have done with some thumbing
bass in there, however it's a small gripe when the overall game is as good as it
is.