GC 2005: Burnout Revenge - Hands On

[Nick]

Take one super high powered street machine. Add one complete nutter of a driver and stir in loads of destructable cars, vans and buses and you've got yourself a fun and frantic racing game.

Some lessons in life have to be learnt and today whilst playing Burnout Revenge in the company of Stephan Kelsey from Electronic Arts, I learnt another; Never, never, never get in a car with Stephan at the wheel. The guy’s a nutter! He makes those police chase TV shows look tame by comparison!

Check out the hands on session over on HEXUS.gaming

[Mike Fishcake]

Just to add my 2p worth to this: I preordered Burnout Revenge for the PS2 from Game, and today a demo of the game to whet my appetite popped through the door.

I didn't see how it was possible to improve on the fantastically winning formula of B3, but if this one level demo is anything to go by, Burnout fans will be more than pleasantly surprised. Absolutely amazing. The graphics seem a bit more "real" - the demo level is quite dark and industrial, rather than typical colourful arcadey graphics. Can't speak for the other levels, but this certainly adds to the ambience.

The subtle additions make it work so very, very well. The fact that you can crash into other traffic - when I read that at first, I thought it was going to make it a bit too easy and a bit too boring, but no. No, it adds so much to the game. It's great when you're on a boost and you shunt some poor innocent car hundreds of metres across the road, especially when they land on an opponent

The ramps are fantastic too - it's great fun flying into the air, and my personal favourite is shooting up a ramp, driving along the scaffolding and landing back down on the ground again. On top of an opponent if you're lucky!

I like the fact that there are options to take slight detours/short cuts through parts of it as well.

The best bit though is the Race Crashbreaker - you know the bit in the B3 crash mode, after you've done your crash, and a certain amount of cars have been damaged, you get the option to obliterate your car? (R2 on the PS2 - not sure about the Xbox) Well, if you crash during a race, you get the opportunity to use crashbreaker if you so desire, causing anything close enough by to also explode. It's daft, but it's absolutely brilliant when you can get instant revenge on someone that's took you down but not moved away quickly enough

The Burnout Revenge team have done themselves proud. I can't wait for the full game to arrive now.

[Nick]

Yeah, they've certainly worked hard on the playability of the game. Flashing along at blinding speeds it soon becomes clear that EA have eschewed real race mechanics in favour of fun.

It's only a few parts of the course that you have to worry about lifting of the gas and taking a racing line through the corners, the rest of the time you can just concentrate on taking out other cars and traffic.

I think EA have got the balance just right here and captured that essential 'easy to learn, hard to master' quality that makes a good game.

[Mike Fishcake]

And it's arrived through my letterbox a day early!!

My 5 year old son has already beat me several times in Road Rage mode

Now, back to the game!

[Zaneblade]

another game i really want to get.... do it get the Logitech G5 and have a good mouse for ages or this game and play it alot for a little while and bored of it

[Mike Fishcake]

another game i really want to get.... do it get the Logitech G5 and have a good mouse for ages or a game that i will play for abit and get bored off

?

It depends. As with Burnout 3, it's much much better on two-player rather than one player (or indeed online) but one player is still great. One thing I've noticed though is that is is really really very easy for the first few ranks. It does get more difficult though.

And it's WAY more fun to play on a wheel, sat right in front of the screen with the music OFF and the volume on very loud indeed

[Zaneblade]

sorry i went of on abit of a rant... i am trying to decide what i want to get wiith the small amount of money i have at the moment... from what i have seen this game does seem alot of fun but also quite simular to all the other burnouts

[autopilot]

Is there a PC version?

[Zaneblade]

no its only for Xbox and PS2

[Nick]

And PSP!

[autopilot]

Another good reason to get a PSP, damn you!!!

..must.... resist.....

[Lee H]

The Xbox version is fantastic

I lost 9 hours on Sunday progressing through this game and not 1 bit of housework was done

Next time I speak to Criterion I'll inform them its there fault I have a pile of washing taller than Nick.

Must resist playing it tonight....

[Mike Fishcake]

Zane - it isn't *that* much of a radical departure sure, but there are enough small tweaks in it for it to be worth getting.

To the people that have played it - what do you reckon about the new crash mode? Better or not as good as in B3? I haven't decided yet. It's really, really extremely fiddly, but when I do manage to get everything lined up just right, it looks fantastic. Takes a hell of a long time to do it though, but I suppose that might be part of the fun

Wildmonkey - next time you speak to Criterion, let them know there's a 28 year old and a 5 year old that will be more than happy to bug/beta test the next version of Burnout, if they're going to bother doing one for the PS2

(If not, I'll just buy whatever console it's out on. Burnout fanboy? Me? )