| Burnout Arcade games, too simplistic? Yeah right, but that's what a lot of people think about them when they are converted to the home, arcade games are what video games are all about, need I go any further, to tell you the definition of a videogame? F U N, any fool should know that, although Burnout isn't a arcade conversion it plays a lot like one, and bursts with attitude! I can never forget Outrun, that sexy red sports car, that woman with the finger (and I don't mean the V sign) and that music, everything changed the face of the arcade racing genre (no such thing as crappy simulations back then, you see) although it didn't go stale afterwards, Ridge Racer comes to mind, and when I heard Criterion studios had a secret racing game in development known only as Shiny Red Car, I have been following this closely, and finally lets begin the review! When Criterion studios first started development of Burnout it was obvious that they wanted to design a game where risks can become rewarding and how illegal racing through rush hour traffic is about taking risks. Drive on the wrong side of the road, miss a car by a very small fraction, a few of the risks you must take to make use of the burn turbo boost, which has a bar at the bottom of the screen which fills up when risky manoeuvres are successfully pulled off, when it is full just press R1 and watch the screen blur as the car speeds up to an incredible speed, it also acts as a sort of performance meter, as every time you crash the bar loses a large amount of boost, this can become frustrating, but it's a clever system, and the boost isn't always needed. Lets get one thing straight, this game isn't anywhere near the word slow, my jaw dropped when I saw the speed of the machines flying along the roads dodging oncoming and incoming traffic, but like lots of speed freaks know, putting your foot down can result in disaster, especially if you are racing on a busy road, and Burnout delivers that fear (apart from the fact that no one gets hurt) It is very exciting but quite scary, when you do crash (and you will) your jaw will drop even further then when it did when you first saw the speed of the game, each crash has the real impact and physics of what you would expect, some low speed crashes are not severe, while high speed crashes, will do a lot of damage and have a massive impact, talking of damage the game delivers, but only after each crash, and then when you are returned to the road, the car is repaired, but I won't say I can forgive it, cause I wasn't disappointed with the lack of damage during driving anyways, it's an arcade game it doesn't need damage, lets face it, it has those amazing crashes. Like you would expect burnout features checkpoint time, in which checkpoints must be passed through to gain more time in hope of getting the position you need and the completion of the track, you begin with 4 credits, but these are hard to keep especially after the first track, as the game is hard, but what makes it worse is you can't save your progress, although it is an arcade style game, then again it's made for the home not the arcades, so I can't forgive the game on this aspect, we didn't all buy our memory cards for nothing! The graphics truly look like a next generation arcade game of old, the cars are shiny and the pop up is non-existent as far as I can see, while the tracks are greatly put together, with corners which you can drift round (which is fun) and straight zoom paths to rush through with the adrenaline kick, that we all need and feel at times. So, the question is.....does Shiny Red Car a.k.a Burnout deserve to be up there with the arcade driving giants? Is it an all time great? Yes it's a great achievement by Criterion, what they set out to do was successful, fast, exciting and a high impact-adrenaline rush!!!!!Chris Wigham 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Opinions round up "Burnout shows exactly how a racing game should be done and is not over the top with realism like some others in the genre (ahem...GT3) it focuses on fun rather then realism and thats how things should be, Its how most racing games were in the past and how they should have stayed. The only downer is the frustrating difficultly" Simon Wigham |
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