I'd been waiting for the price to drop on this game-- I rarely pay more than $20 for any game-- and it finally happened last week. I didn't get a chance to start playing it until this past Monday, but I've been addicted to it ever since. For those of you who haven't played it, here's how the game works. I'm sure you're all familiar with the basic concept of burnout, but the game is set up a bit different this time around. There are 11 ranks, and you progress in ranks as you earn stars by participating in the Burnout World tour. During a race/crash/whatever event, you'll earn anywhere from 1 to 4 stars based on your perfomance. If you get a bronze medal, you lose a star from your final rating. If you get a gold, you gain one. After you've earned anough stars, you progress to the next rank. It's a nice addition that increases the sense of accomplishment you get from placing in events in the world tour. It would be a nice touch, though, if your opponents would behave differently toward you as your rank increases. You'd think that they would be a bit intimidated by someone with the rank of Dominator, but not against someone with a rank of only Insane. Basically, I think the higher ranks should give you a little clout on the road. It would be tricky to work into the game, but I'm sure it could be done.
Well, earlier today, I achieved the Elite rank, the highest you can get in the game. At this point, I only have to do a couple more events and do a few more signature takedowns, and I'll have 100% game completion. I have to say, though, there are some things I don't like as much as I did in Burnout 3. I feel that the crash events have been crippled. They were my favorite part of Burnout 3; I played all 100 of them obsessively until I had a gold medal in all of them. In Revenge, the crash events have been all but ruined. Cash multipliers have been removed, and you now have to start your car with a little meter like they have in those golf games. There are also the sounds of a crowd who will either applaud or laugh at you, depending on how your crash goes. It gets very annoying, very quickly. I still enjoy most of the crashes, but they're just nowhere near the same level as they were in Burnout 3. I heard the golf meter is removed in the 360 version, so hopefully, Criterion has heard all the complaints and will restore crash mode to its former glory in the next installment.
I loved Road Rage races in B3, but they took second to crash. with crash events crippled in BR, Road Rage is my number one mode. Maybe it's just me, but the RR seems more fun here than in B3, not that it was bad then. It's just improved now. I have trouble with things like Burning Lap, but in Road Rage, I'm an unstoppable beast. It's not at all uncommon for me to get twice as many takedowns as I need to get a gold medal, which is no small feat. When in-race crashbreakers are enabled at Rank 6, it just gets better.
I will say the track design is both good and bad. The courses have been improved from B3, with all kinds of little areas that are tailor-made for takedowns. Walls jutting into the street, dumpsters in your path, ramps that don't necessarily land you back on the road, and columns that you just can't see until your wrapped around them are abundant. I love having more obstructions, as it increases the challenge and gives you many more opportunities for shunting your opponents into them, but I think they went too far with it. One of my friends was playing a road rage in Motor City earlier, and he was crashing into obstructions literally every 10-15 seconds. Granted, he doesn't play these types of games much, but there still shouldn't be that kind of difficulty involved in learning the track, even for a newcomer to the game.
The graphics and sound are INCREDIBLE, but that's pretty much expected from the Burnout series by now. There are few things better than turning out the lights, cranking up the 5.1, and shredding some metal at top volume. I miss the "single event" mode, where you can just play a road rage or crash event without worrying about winning a medal or anything. In Revenge, if you're not doing multiplayer, then you have to play the world tour. It would be nice to be able to do road rage of traffick attack, and turn off the time limits and "critical damage" BS and just play as long as you want. A mapmaker mode would be awesome, although I wouldn't really expect it on the current-gen systems. I see no reason why it couldn't be done on the 360, though. Maybe next time. In the end, Burnout: Revenge is an awesome game, well-worth anyone's time. Even if I do still like Burnout 3 just a teensy bit more overall.
Posts: 1631 Location: Rockville, IA Joined: 24.06.05
Posted on 10-07-2006 03:10
I've never played the title, but for some reason, I read your whole review. While I'm not into most straight racing games, but the wild, demolition ones can be a blast and I've always thought this title looked cool. You may want to email this review to the creators of the game. Whether or not they actually read them, a lot of developers seem to want to see gamers' comments. As far as gaming goes, I'm just waiting to see if Gamecube will put out a decent WWE title by THQ.
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RE: I conquered Burnout: Revenge! (includes a mini review)
I haven't played any of these, but they've been highly recommended by several trustworthy friends and I really liked the batmobile levels of Batman Begins which are supposed to be similar. Would you recommend that I pick up 3 instead of Revenge to get into the series? I have been looking for a pretty cool racer since I am pretty burned out on the ones I own.
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RE: I conquered Burnout: Revenge! (includes a mini review)
It sounds like both you guys would love this game. I don't care much for straight-up racers either; they bore me. The sense of speed you get playing this game is unbelievable. The action is fast and relentless, and some of the crashes are just incredible. There's just nothing like destroying a rival by smashing him into a stone column, or smacking into a van and causing a massive vehicular pileup. Traffic attack mode is probably the best post-work stress relief there is. Nothing beats just speeding along and smashing into literally hundreds of cars, wreaking massive highway havoc. It's just awesome.
As for which game I recommend, that's kinda tough. I think Burnout Revenge improves on its predecessors in almost every way, but the crash mode in B3 is really unrivalled. Overall, I think Burnout Revenge is the better game, but I still love B3 because of the excellent crash mode. 100 crash events, some of them so much fun I've played them dozens and dozens of times without tiring of them. I suppose I'd recommend B3 first, and if you like it, get Revenge later on. Once you've played Revenge, it's tough to go back to playing B3(aside from the crash mode, of course). You can pick up B3 for like $12 used at Gamestop.
Oh, something else I saw earlier today. I was in Circuit City, and they had a bunch of games for $8.96. Not just old crap, either, lots of new stuff was in there, too. Among them was Burnout Revenge. I was a little miffed because I paid $20 for it not a week ago, but oh well. I did pick up From Russia, With Love and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks for my Xbox, though.
I have Burnout 3 Takedown for X-Box and it is quite the game. It?s a great Arcade Racer and the crashes and takedowns are cool. Since it?s a Platinum Hit series game it?s only $14.95.
As a far as an outstanding racing game you need to get Flatout It?s now down to less than $30, maybe even less than $20 some places and is wicked fun. I?ve raced all but one of the 36 Tracks (I have 4 left to complete, 1 still locked) and it is by far the best racing game I?ve played.
Flatout 2 is coming soon and I understand it?s even better.
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RE: I conquered Burnout: Revenge! (includes a mini review)
I got Flatout a couple of months back, after you recommended it. It's fun, but I'm not that good at it. The cars are very difficult to control, very loose steering and all that. I also miss the sense of outrageous speed I get with Burnout. I love the ragdoll minigames, though. I think I've gotten my money's worth out of the game just from those.
I own burnout revenge for xbox 360 and I agree with you DF on pretty much everything except that BO:3 is better, but thats because I've never played it before. The graphics are sensational, the variety of cars and gameplay non-repetitive with many diff. options to keep players happy, and the controls are fairly simple. What more is there to say?
"I went around the world, searched in all the shadows. And there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge... Me"
You know, I said earlier that I liked B3 a bit more, but I tried to play it again the other day. My Xbox hard drive died a few weeks ago, and I lost all my saves from the last 4 1/2 years, so I pretty much have to redo everything for all the games I still play. I was working on rebuilding everything I'd done in B3-- and it's a lot, I had gold medals in all 100 crash events, golds in most of the other race events, most of the cars unlocked, all crash headlines, Gah, I hate even thinking about it-- and anyway, after getting used to the slightly different handling of BR, B3 just wasn't cutting it for me anymore. I still like the crash events better in B3, but after this experience I now consider Burnout Revenge the better game overall.
I can't wait to get it when i get a 360 this fall. I heard the remixed sound will melt your face off if you have a good surround sound system.
Drunken Fist wrote:My Xbox hard drive died a few weeks ago, and I lost all my saves from the last 4 1/2 years, so I pretty much have to redo everything for all the games
That can happen? Crap, that is scary.
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RE: I conquered Burnout: Revenge! (includes a mini review)
Yep, out of nowhere it just stopped working. The green light around the eject button flashed green and red, and a screen popped up that said "Your Xbox requires service. Contact Microsoft customer support." I toyed with the idea of repairing it myself until I found out it was the hard drive. My warranty is long since expired, so it would have cost me $80 for Microsoft to repair it, plus shipping there and back. So, I just took it to Gamestop, got $40 credit, put $60 with that and just got a refurbished system. The things that really irk me about it most are the loss of all the music I had recorded to the hard drive, my B3 save, and my Morrowind saves most of all. I had 2 characters in Morrowind, and had invested literally hundreds of hours in that game over the years. My Morrowind saves are really irreplaceable, as the game is never quite the same when you replay it.
It's not like the Sony situation, at least. Of all my friends who have an Xbox, I'm the only one to have any problems with it. Conversely, I only know 1 person with a PS2 who has not had to replace it at least once. One guy I know has gone through 4 PS2s since 2001. Now THAT's just ridiculous!
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