Burnout Revenge
Score: 98% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: EA Games Developer: Criterion Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 2 (2 - 6 online) Genre: Racing (Arcade)/ Action/ Online
Graphics & Sound: Fun and stunning gameplay mechanics of Burnout with the graphical prowess of the Xbox 360 - need I say more? I guess I should, else my editor will strip me of my reviewing privileges and condemn me to doing only lowly database work for her sites. The most noticeable change in Burnout Revenge for the 360 is the graphics. As you would expect, the level of detail has increased drastically, and that's saying something since I was really impressed with the PS2 version of this game. All in all, the cars are spectacular. They shine in the sun when you first start a race, while towards the end, the paint fades, chips and parts of the car are just downright totaled. The vehicles aren't the only thing that look better; everything about the environment is just staggering. I was shocked when I could easily make out the cracks in the road. Put simply, the game uses the 360's graphical capabilities to its fullest. Audio wise, Revenge is top notch. The game supports Digital Dolby surround sound, and nothing is sweeter than hearing a car come up behind you and pushing them into a wall for a revenge takedown and never actually seeing them, doing all by sound. Engines noises are solid and metal-crunching crashes are artfully done.
Gameplay: Burnout Revenge for the 360 isn't much different than the versions for the other, current generation systems, at least not gameplay wise. The game supports seven different types of events, all spread across many different locations from big city streets to mountain summits. These events are Race, Traffic Attack, Burning Lap, Road Rage, Eliminator, Preview and Grand Prix Race. Race is your standard race event where you will also try and take down other cars to earn boost and aggression. Traffic Attack is the classic mode from all of the previous Burnout titles. Here you race your car down a street into an intersection, all in an attempt to cause the most monetary damage as possible. The one thing I did miss from Revenge is when flying over the crash scene, the game no longer displays the amount of damage for each vehicle in the accident. In Burnout 3 when flying over, a dollar value would appear over each vehicle. Sure you couldn't physically count up the amount of money, but now the final dollar value seems to come out of nowhere. Burning Lap is one lap around the track, while Road Rage has you racing around, over and over again with a clock ticking down. The more cars you wreck, the more time you gain and the more money you rack up. Eliminator is an all new event that has the last place position being, well, eliminated as time goes by. Preview gives you a sneak peek at a car and/or location that you can unlock later in the game and Grand Prix is your standard multi-race event. Burnout Revenge is further broken down into 10 ranks from Harmless to Elite. Progression through the ranks is based on the number of stars you have collected in the game. The number of stars you earn in each event is based on a combination of your performance and your aggression. You can earn a Silver, Bronze or Gold medal in each event as well as aggression values of OK, Good, Great and Awesome. These values earn you one, two, three and four stars respectively. If you get a Bronze medal in the event, you lose a star, if you earn a Silver, you keep the same number of stars and if you nab a Gold you will gain an extra star. So if you compete in a crash event and earn enough crash-dollars to grab a gold, while also earning an Awesome in the aggression meter, then you will achieve a full five stars in that event.
Difficulty: Burnout Revenge's difficulty all depends on exactly how much you want to achieve. If you are just trying to unlock all the cars, events and ranks, then getting the higher scores in race or crash-event is fairly easy to do and can typically be done on your first attempt. It is when you try and get a perfect in an event (a Gold Medal and an Awesome in aggression) when you will find yourself repeating races over and over again. The hardest events to get a Perfect in (at least from my perspective) were the Burning Lap events. These had you race around a track once and I seemed to always find myself getting either an Awsome, but Silver medal or a Great, but Gold medal. I found this was typically because I had to slow down or not take some shortcuts in order to up my Aggresion bar, but this cost me some precious tenths of a second. In the end, you have to know the tracks, know where the other cars are, hold down the boost and take all or most of the short cuts in order to nail all five stars in most of these events.
Game Mechanics: Burnout Revenge's control scheme follows the standard Xbox racing scheme. When I first got my 360 and played games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted, I had to get used to the scheme, but now that setup is fairly second nature and it lent itself really well to this game. The Right Trigger is your accelerator, the Left is your brake, while you use your boost by holding down the A button. If you are in the middle of a crash, you can activate the Aftertouch effect with the A button. This allows you to guide your car into traffic and obstacles to cause more damage. If crashbreakers are armed, then you can activate the explosion with the B. The Burnout series has been one of my favorites since I was first introduced to it. Revenge for the current gen-systems was the best in the series, and it's only gotten better with this 360 release. Highly recommended.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
MLB \'06 The Show CMT Presents: Karaoke Revolution Country