30. Burnout Revenge | 2006 |
Xbox Series X |
7/9:
I played all the way until I unlocked the final "Dominator" levels, and decided that was good enough for a 'completion'.
Burnout Revenge is all about completing challenges. They pretty much boil down to races, time attacks, or crashing into cars. The third and final category is probably the greatest, most well-known part about the Burnout franchise -- and the thing you'll be doing the most of throughout this game. There's the 'Traffic Attack' mode for example: where you crash pedestrian vehicles into other pedestrian vehicles to achieve a higher score. It gets tougher later on; when you have to go through stretches where there's no vehicles to hit. The timer runs out quickly when you don't crash into vehicles, so there's some strategy involved when deciding the right moments to attack and when to speed up.
The races are a mixed bag. They are pretty engaging, don't get me wrong, but this game has some of the wonkiest AI I've seen in a while. On early stages, even when multiple opponents are ahead of you, they will all slow down abruptly right at the finish line so you can win. In later stages however, if you don't have any boost saved up while you're in the lead, prepare for opponents popping out of nowhere to knock you off course. It seems the only way to get past them without boost is by either performing a takedown to gain boost or just wait for the AI to crash themselves (which happens quite a lot).
The Xbox 360 version apparently uses a tweaked physics system different from the last-gen ports, along with enhanced graphics. The visuals lean heavily on the sepia (probably popular at the time), but it's a little too much for me to handle at times. It's harder to keep up with the later challenges that feature faster cars when there's so much visual stimuli to distract you: bloom, motion blur, the blur of brown colors mixed together, all the icons on screen at once, etc.. Sometimes hitting into other racers won't register as you hitting them, but them hitting you. Even when you're practically T-boning them, if you get the red text of "Slammed!" as you both approach the oncoming wall, you're screwed.
As much as I'm ranting on, I do like this game. 'Crash' mode is the signature highlight. Crashing into cars feels visceral and pure eye-candy to observe, yet the mode requires some thought regarding where to crash in order to achieve the highest score. You start understanding the tracks more as the game gets faster and it really puts your memory to the test. It also helps that Burnout Revenge is a buttery smooth 60 FPS all throughout. Not my ideal arcade racer, but it's still stupid fun.
Grade: C+
