Burnout Revenge - PS2
Burnout Revenge is the fourth in Criterion’s massively successful racing series. The game takes all of the greatness of Burnout 3: Takedown, and adds to it. Many of the modes have remained largely similar to its predecessor, but there have been modifications to them.
The most notably different mode is crash. The objective is the same, but this time you must start by pressing x at two points on a boost meter type thing that is reminiscent of golf games. After that the next thing is of course to crash. The rest is essentially the same as Burnout 3 but with minor differences, the main ones being that the pick ups are no more, and there is now a target car which gives you extra $ if you hit it. Crashbreakers are the same, except they now have a bar that resembles FFs limit break bars. Speaking of which, crashbreakers are now available in race, road rage, and eliminator modes! Once you’ve crashed, if you can time it right you can take out many people with just one press of R2. It’s great fun! If one of the opponents you blew up was the one that caused you to crash, then you get instant revenge.
Ah yes, revenge…. As soon as you get taken out, the opponent who caused its marker goes red. When this happens, all moves against that rival become revenge versions of themselves, up to and including revenge takedown. Needless to say, these moves are a lot more satisfying than normal, and also add more to your ranking
During any event, you get points for aggressive moves, driving skills (air, etc.) and so on. These give you a ranking of between 1 star (ok) and 4 stars (awesome). Getting a bronze in the event will take one star away, silver will not change the rating, and gold will add one. Getting gold and awesome gives you a perfect rating, and 5 stars. After the race, these stars go towards reaching higher ranks. There are 11 ranks in total, going from harmless to elite, with a heightening no. of stars required to reach each one.
As you progress through both races and ranks, you will unlock new cars. There are over 80 to unlock in the game, so there’s plenty of choice. Most are from either the R series, or are M-Types. The R series generally include their top speed in their name, i.e. the R195 Prototype DX goes at 195 mph. The R series are mostly small lightweight cars, whereas the M-Types are mostly more bulky cars, and occasionally you get classy beamer look-alikes as well. There are also various special cars to unlock, as well as crash vehicles. This alone give the game a great lifetime, there’s little chance you’ll do everything for a long while.
The new game mode in this game is Traffic Attack. This is an amazingly fun race in which you blaze round a circuit taking out as much traffic as you can. In any mode, and same direction traffic that is of small size (i.e. not a bus or a flatbed, or various other large vehicles) can be ‘checked’, which essentially means smashed off the road. Traffic Attack’s objective is to do this as much as possible, with the targets laid out as in crash mode. If you’ve been stuck in a traffic jam and want to release your frustration, you can’t do any better.
The game’s sound track is mostly rock & indie, but there are bands of other genres included too. Bands include Billy Talent, Goldfinger, Bloc Party, Timo Maas, The Bravery and many others. While rock is my preference, I’ll give it 7/10 for soundtrack due to its lack of other genres.
All in all, I would recommend this game to anyone who liked gaming in general, and especially those who enjoy racing, and racing violently. I’d say this is probably the best racer available.
