Burnout Revenge Review

It may have started out as just another post-Ridge Racer driving game with a unique focus on beautifully destructive car crashes, but over the years, the Burnout series has really carved out its own spot in the racing genre. Last year's Burnout 3: Takedown was when the series truly came into its own by achieving a near-perfect balance between high-speed racing and nefarious racing tactics designed to put the other racers out of commission. With a name like Burnout Revenge, you might expect the latest game in the series to be a little rougher, a little meaner. And you'd be right. While it isn't a total reinvention, Burnout Revenge makes significant alterations to the Burnout formula that essentially render every other game in the series obsolete.

The biggest changes in Burnout Revenge come in its track design and in the ability to slam into some nonracing traffic and plow right through it. Wrecking into innocent bystanders in automobiles is known as traffic checking, and it's limited to small and medium-sized cars that are stopped or traveling in the same direction as your vehicle. These cars, once hit by a racer, essentially become weapons. If you slam them just right, you can send them flying into the other lane, ideally slamming into another racer and taking him down immediately. But checked traffic will also fly behind you after being rear-ended, letting you create tricky flying obstacles for other racers to avoid. Having to keep track of which traffic you can and can't hit adds an interesting layer of complexity to the game, though the sometimes comical physics displayed by checked traffic--which flies around like you're wrecking into an aluminum can--looks a little weird. The whole concept also ties in to the new traffic attack event, which gives you money for each car you smash and ties its medals to specific dollar amounts.