Game Review: Burnout

Game: Burnout

Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Critereon

Release Date: 16th November 2001

Burnout, as a racing game focuses both on circuit racing and big crashes, a refreshing look at the street racing genre. An interesting decision is the lack of car specificality, the game chooses instead to call the cars things such as “Sports Coupe”, "Muscle" and “Pickup”. This is most likely to avoid license fees, on having real car brands in-game, but its something most of the other racing games of the time have, thus putting Burnout at a bit of a disadvantage. 

The gameplay mechanic is fast and furious, risking massive crashes to go around blind bends and weaving in and out of other cars on the road. The first race series takes place across 3 tracks, the first of which has an American feel and sound. Interestingly races take a good 8-10 minutes to complete due to long laps. The second race has more blind bends and so took me a couple of tries to pass, however the crash mechanic does make for a rather balanced fairness to the whole game. Anyone can lose the lead from a random encounter with a lorry, and while I'm not a big fan of having a clock and opponents (mostly because the clock doesn't apply to them, only me), I think its perhaps more necessary here than in other games, due to the temptation to ram the AI off the road constantly otherwise.

The game is not all easy driving though, there are some places where crashes are completely unfair, and the game can position them to be unavoidable for you, leading to moments of rage at the television. Normally I might complain about the fact that some of the goals in the races are to come 3^rd or 2^nd, however, based on the unpredictability of crashes and the fact that one bad lap can spell the end, its rather less of a problem, in fact I'm glad the targets are realistic, especially with the length of races, having 8 minutes of work ruined in one crash is not fun.

Another interesting feature of the game is the face off mode to unlock cars. Having won a championship unlocks a face off race, which you must then win to unlock a specific car. This may seem long winded but a one on one works perfectly with the back and forth of the crashes. The next race series don't really get harder but the target works it way up to coming 1^st. There are night and wet tracks included in later race series and although there aren't a lot of series overall, the length of each race would make for a long grind if there were.

So all in all, this game is different from the standard Need For Speed type circuit racer, but the difficulty is well judged and the gameplay is easy to pick up and fun. The game perhaps lacks a wide variety of tracks and cars to choose from, with only 9 cars with everything unlocked but the game feels less about the selection of cars than other games of the time, and sections of track are often cleverly re-used in other race series.

The soundtrack of the game is impressive, giving a balance between a driving feel for each track and using a tense string piece to evoke the tension at the end of a race. Overall, its a fun game to play and the cars handle well. Although it can be frustrating to lose a race after a long time playing, due to long laps it's time well spent on this exhilarating game. 

Rating: 78/100
Grade: B