Burnout Revenge Review
EA has followed up the popular Burnout 3: Takedown with more vehicular destruction in the form of
Burnout Revenge. But will there be enough additions to make the game more exciting, or will it be as painful as out driving with your Grandma?
As the title suggests, this edition is all about revenge - on your racing rivals as well as the peak hour traffic. The game is basically the same as the previous Burnout, with both Race and Crash events making up the single-player World Tour. The unlocking of events, however, has been tweaked a little bit. To progress, you must increase your Revenge Rank by receiving a rating for each event you complete. The Event Rating is based on how aggressive your driving is in that event - Takedowns (causing opponents to crash), slams, shunts, boosting and drifting will all increase your rating from OK (1 star) up to Awesome (4 stars). Also, you must achieve a medal placing in each event to keep your rating - a bronze will drop your rating whereas a gold medal will increase your rating to a maximum of Perfect (5 stars). There are 10 Revenge Ranks from 'Harmless' to 'Elite' which progressively unlock new events.
The Race events are all back, including the favourite, Road Rage - plus a new mode called Traffic Attack, in which the objective is to wreak havoc through the peak hour traffic. This is done by the new ability to 'check' small same-way traffic - or put simply, drive up the arse of cars and light trucks and shove them out the way. Checking traffic can be also be very useful in other events to increase you rating and to score Takedowns by slamming traffic into your racing rivals. The Race events also benefit from the use of the Crashbreaker when you crash, which was previously limited to the Crash events. If you are taken down, you can score an Instant Revenge on your rival by pressing the B button to detonate your car.
The Crash events have also received a much needed make-over. The Instant Boost has been replaced with an 'old-school' style launch bar, which requires you to press the A button on two sweet-spots to get a perfect start - get it wrong and you will drive off slowly with no momentum - or worse, blow up your engine and get nowhere at all. With no multiplier pick-ups, the value of damage caused is multiplied by the number of vehicles you manage to blow up when they've crashed. The addition of crosswinds to compete with as you catch air off jumps is a nice one, but the need to do some 'button mashing' to get your Crashbreaker to explode seems a bit unnecessary.
