Burnout

July 06th, 2007 | Category: GameCube

This review is for Burnout on the Gamecube. It was developed by Criterion and released in Europe on 3rd May 2002, nearly 6 months after its original release on the Playstation 2. that specific game plays a lot like an Arcade racer, slightly unlike Burnout 3 (I haven’t played Burnout 2 though). It’s a short game with high thrills, and whilst there aren’t many modes, much replayability or a lot of depth and length to the game, it is still quite fun for what it is.

Whilst there are only a few tracks, what tracks are here are quite lengthy. Some of the last tracks in the game can take a good 8 minutes per lap to complete, with there being 3 laps per track. The game additionally mirrors tracks in order to fit more into the game. You literally race through cities, against other racers and the ordinary drivers who are simply getting from Point A to Point B. One thing that sets that game apart from all other racing games is what happens when you crash. Instead of just spinning out, and soon after getting back onto the track, here the entire scene slows down as your car graphically smashes into others, showing the wreckage build up around you as other cars are inevitably drawn into the pile-ups. Another interesting, albeit kinda worthless (at least in that edition) feature is that it shows the amount of money your crashes have cost. Crashing your own car into another builds up a good $40,000 worth of damage, next dragging a bus and a truck into it, as well as a few Porsches and all of a sudden you’ve got about $250,000 worth of damage on your hands. As I said, in that game it meant nothing really except for bragging rights, but in Burnout 3 it becomes a key part of the game.

Of course being an Arcade racer, crashing and the replays slowed you down, and you have a Timer to get to each checkpoint. You race against 5 other drivers, and so the point of the game is to not only get to each checkpoint in moment, but to plus beat your opponents. Another awesome feature is being able to barge your opponents so that they crash into vehicles instead of you! that slows them down just as much, and it’s plus great to sometimes see the AI crash into something on their own right in front of you, leaving you with the task of trying to dodge the flying cars, and it can be quite heart-stopping sometimes.

The graphics in the game are to that day still pretty awesome. I don’t know how it

compares to the PS2 and Xbox versions, but I would have hoped that with how distant it took to come out, they have been improved. All I know is that I still think the graphics are pretty awesome. The vehicles all look very realistic, and when crashing the amount of instance that has been put into realistically wrecking the cars is amazing. The scenery is beautiful in some places, from the views across the sea in Paris and the Costa Del Sol, to the tall skyscrapers and neon signs of New York City. There are additionally tracks that allow you to race at night, and others allowing you to race in both the rain and the sun, and all of them additionally plus look beautiful, with the rain bouncing off your car and the road, and your headlights reflecting off the road in the night.

The music in the game isn’t poor for what it is, but what’s there is incredibly limited. It’s good listening to it the first few times, but eventually it can wear thin. It’s a little rocky which I quite like, but there just aren’t abundant tracks in the game to eventually stop me from muting it and putting on my own music. The sound effects are all very good though. Roaring engines, the sounds of metal smashing and glass breaking when you crash, squealing tires and all the other fun parts of racing games. It’s all done well here.

There’s not much replayability really. Once you complete the main Championship, there isn’t much else to do. There’s a few other modes, such as instance Attack and Head-to-Head, but nothing really lengthy lasting. The Multiplayer mode is pretty good, allowing you to race with one friend either against one another, or against one another with a few AI controlled vehicles as well. It lets you choose any Championship course you’ve completed, and I still play it every so often to that day, as it can be pretty fun. There’s not really much else to do, other than unlocking a few other vehicles which for the most part are gimmicky and kinda suck.

Overall though, that is a very fun little game. It’s short, but nowadays should be very cheap. It’s definitely worth picking up, and whether you have a friend or family member who likes racing games thereupon you’re in for a blast. The game has aged well, and whilst the newer games are a lot more in depth, that is the one that spawned them, and you can’t really go wrong.