by: John Olin

March 12, 2006

The Burnout series has been a great achievement in terms of technology, and innovation in gameplay ever since it’s inception a few years back. Burnout Revenge is essentially a Burnout title with all the greatness but bigger, better, and with a new rival revenge, aspect to it is no different. This fantastic title was released just a few months ago on the Xbox, and pushed the system to the limits in terms of sound, visuals, and gameplay all the way through. Xbox Evolved in fact gave it a favorable review, and we are just now finally seeing the title on Xbox 360. The game is definitely worth buying on the Xbox 360 but it also all depends on who is buying the title. If you are willing to pay twenty more than what the game is going for on the Xbox, assuming that you have both Xbox and Xbox 360, since the whizzes at Microsoft can apparently get Barbie Crappy Road Adventures to be backwards compatible with the Xbox 360, but a popular game such as Burnout Revenge is a no go. If you don’t have an Xbox, and are looking for an Xbox 360 title definitely worth playing, are a racing fan, or a long time Burnout fan, then read on.

There are two main kinds of gameplay elements in the game within the game’s modes. The racing element is also the element that has the most variety. When racing you will have quite a few different tracks to race on, with many of them fitting into the same areas but variations of each other. There are many different routes in each of the tracks also creating endless possibilities for winning the race. Somehow, the designers managed to make the courses extremely navigational, despite their often-chaotic appearance. You may end up taking routes that take you on rooftops, and boosting at top speeds, you will actually go to another part of the track in mid-air. The amazing thing is the tracks are set-up so that opponents could be taking an alternate route, and the same time your gliding through the air they are as well, leading you both to crash into each other. The alternate routes also come in handy when playing any Road Rage mode, specifically online. When playing online you have to try and get away from the other team as they try and crash you and make it to the finish line, so knowing how to go alternate directions, and not just on one fixed path helps a lot. The traffic on the courses also adds on to the sense of danger, and excitement. You can go against traffic, avoiding each car as you go by them to try and outrun opponents or take them out. You can also go with traffic, comically crashing into vehicles sending them flying into one another, and giving you a speed boost.

Speaking of traffic, rushing into it, and your opponent is a lot of what makes the game. Now if you rush into semis, bigger vehicles, or head-on traffic you will definitely bite it, but otherwise it is fair game. When an opponent hits you into a wall, the game slows down, zooming in on that vehicle giving you a new rival. This rival will be a bit easier to take down than the other people you are racing up against, but when you take them down you get rewarded with turbo boost, therefore the game encourages you to go after them a great deal. The controls for racing are extremely easy to get used to as well. You use the R trigger to accelerate, the A button for boost, X button to change from third to first-person views, L trigger to brake, and Y to look back.

The game has four modes: World Tour, Multiplayer, Xbox Live, and Burnout Clips. I The World Tour mode is definitely the meat of the game, and is the single player portion of the title. You have a total of ten tours to complete each with a variety of fourteen different race/crash types in each of them. The different types are pretty interesting. They all will reward you Bronze, Silver, or Gold medals depending on the goal, and it definitely you will definitely obsess with getting Gold everything. Besides the medals you also have stars, and the stars indicate how well you did with your drifting, crashing cars, etc during the race. You have a certain amount of stars you can get within each tour, so even if you have Gold, you can still go back and get more stars giving you even more to shoot for. On top of that, the more stars the higher your rank goes up and you can go from safe, to a venerable maniac. When you first start out, the first four or five tours aren’t actually all that difficult, in fact if you don’t average silver medals then you probably are doing something very wrong, especially when doing races. Eventually however, the courses end up becoming more crazy, the cars faster, the stakes higher, and you will get that difficulty you crave. There is a mode where you must crash as much traffic while racing along the track, and if you quit creating crash combos, or crash, a time meter on the top will begin to drop, so the more you crash the better.