I was trying to be a good boy and finish the games in my stable before buying any new ones. I have a plethora of unfinished driving games: Forza, Midnight Club 3, NFSU2, Rallisport Challenge 2, and Burnout 3. But with a Metacritic score of 90, I could not resist buying Burnout: Revenge (for the Xbox).
I did hold off buying it a few weeks after it appeared on shelves. During that time, I perused the message boards and found that some fans didn’t necessarily appreciate traffic checking. I think checking is the best feature of the game. I love it during a road rage event, when I slam into the back of a NPC (non-player car), make it careen down the road and into my opponent. (This feature was partially inspired by the freeway car chase in Bad Boys 2, where cars fall off a truck and do barrel-rolls.) There’s a special race mode built around traffic checking, where you try to slam into as many cars as possible while the clock counts down. It’s utterly simple, yet addictive. The clock quickly goes down, but you can extend the time by slamming into more cars. I found myself slammin’ way past the point I earned a gold medal. Another addition is the vertical takedown, where you can jump and fall on the hood of your opponent. There’s an endless number of trophies for all the various car wrecks.
The other new tweak is the gas/nitro meter start to the Crash mode. Many articles refer to this as the Golf meter. Instead of winding up a club, you are determining how big a Nitro boost your car will get at the start. This is critical because on some courses, you will need to jump from a ramp. If you don’t get enough boost, you may just fall into a chasm and not get any points. It took me a while to master this meter. The trick is that you want to hit the button when it’s in the top Green bar, and then hit the button again when it’s in the bottom Green bar. You’ll get a full boost every time. This feature really makes the Crash mode more exciting, as you’ll constantly be retrying to figure out how to jump and land on the right set of cars for maximum carnage.
Some people think that this version is too easy. I think the AI is better, because the cars actually try to ram you into a corner. Once this happens, your opponent gets a Red Revenge target indicator. If you destroy this car later, you will get extra style points. I also love the branching pathways on the road. While not as extensive as Midnight Club, it provides some nice variety. There are more hidden branches than you would imagine—after following some cars on Xbox Live, I found an alternate path that provided an enormous ramp to jump over a city modeled on Rome. The graphics in this version are tweaked and provide some glorious views of the scenery. The graphic designers went for a washed-out look to most of the tracks. There are so many sun flares, you’ll wish you had sunglasses. The sound is fantastic, especially if you have surround sound, you’ll hear cars/objects flash by as you ride a crazy rocket through the streets.
There are only two complaints that I have about the game. One is what I read on a number of boards: there’s no single player option to just play Road Rage, Eliminator, etc. It’s a bit strange as Burnout 3 had this and it was great. You could play Road Rage on a random set of tracks. In Revenge you have to find the game type in different cities spread across 10 levels. The other problem is that there’s no way to save your settings for the car view: my preferred POV is through the windshield, but I have to make this choice at the start of each race.
I did play some games on Xbox Live and enjoyed it. I’ve also played it with the Fanatec ForceShock Driving Wheel—support is much improved over Burnout 3, and the force feedback signals to the wheel are strong. All in all, this is one of the top five Xbox games this year. No other game conveys a sense of speed like Burnout: Revenge. Nuff said.
Leave a comment