Next-Gen Driving Games #1

Burnout (2001)
By: Criterion Games / Acclaim  Genre: Racing  Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade  First Day Score: Infinity
Also Available For: PlayStation 2, Xbox

As many regular readers here may know, the demise of Sega’s fantastic Dreamcast took with it my enthusiasm for all ‘modern’ gaming as well. Consequently, a vast majority of systems and games released since then went largely ignored by me. Still to this day I’ve used a PS2 only very briefly, and I’ve never used an Xbox, but the GameCube is a bit different. My appreciation of racing games is also well-known and it was these games that consumed the bulk of my time with my shiny Dreamcast so my interest in modern gaming was again briefly piqued by a magazine cover I saw. The magazine was Edge whose cover was only usually awarded to notably important or prestigious subjects so when I saw one dominated by a new racing game called Burnout, I took immediate notice, particularly when I saw the text accompanying the image – "OutRun meets 3DO Need For Speed"…

Yep, that's right - you always start at the back...

That said, any interest I had in videogames at all during my post-Dreamcast depression was intermittent so it took me a good while to get around to playing Burnout, but when I finally did it was the GC version that I plumped for and my first impressions were mixed. It certainly isn't a game to bog you down in exposition - as far as I can tell there's not even a basic outline of your objectives beyond the obvious goal of being 'number one' (snigger), nevermind anything as radical as a backstory, but that isn't too important with games like this. All the game does give you is a choice of several play-modes - Championship, Single Race, Head to Head, Time Attack, and Special. The first two consist of races against three CPU-controlled cars over ‘street’ courses which of course are crammed full of civilian vehicles. Single Race (arcade mode, basically) give you a choice of five fictional cars – Supermini, Sports Coupe, Saloon, Muscle, and Pickup – and three courses to race them on.

Stupid van driver, get out of my way!

Doesn’t sound like much I agree, so luckily more cars and courses can be unlocked by racing (well) in the Championship. This is the mode you'll probably spend by far the most time with and it consists of two types of race - Grand Prix and Marathon races. There are four Grands Prix, which are each a series of three races over several laps of circuit-based courses (the number of laps depends on the length of the circuit), and two Marathons, which are single races over one long point-to-point course. Both types of race have a fairly strict time-limit to reach the numerous checkpoints but successful completion of each unlocks subsequent Championship races, more courses, more options for the Special Mode, and Face Off races. There are four of the latter which are head-to-head races against a CPU-controlled opponent in a new car. Win the race and you unlock the car for future use!

Screeching around quiet streets...

This does of course bring the total number of cars available in the game to nine – the unlockables are (skip this part if you want it to be a surprise!) - Roadster, Saloon GT, Tow Truck, and a Bus! Each vehicle is modelled on a real world equivalent (unofficially, of course) and differs with regards to its top speed, acceleration, and handling. The first two don't matter too much as your opponents will generally be of an equal standard anyway – i.e. if you choose a slow car, they’ll be slow as well, so finding a car that handles according to your preferred driving style is most important. Some of them stick to the road like glue and obey your every command without question; others skid and slide around all over the place! Everyone knows it's way more fun going for the fastest, craziest option though, and to that end I would recommend the Dodge Viper. Ermm, I mean the 'muscle car' - it's big, heavy, and a challenge to control around corners, but it's fast!

One of the nice presentation screens...

There are a total of fifteen named courses through the game but only five of them are completely unique, namely Interstate, Harbor Town, River City, Hillside Pass, Gridlock USA. The others are made up of sections taken from these courses, sometimes reversed or at different times of day (or night). Although they are all comprised of public roads, there's still a reasonable variety of types and features. Their names should give you a good idea or what they're like but you can expect to tackle inner-city areas, motorways, coastal roads, quiet country lanes, and various others featuring undulating surfaces, tunnels, long sweeping corners, sharp right-angle turns, bridges, and lots of other stuff. As mentioned, all roads are filled with normal road-users as well, including everything from normals cars to buses, petrol-tankers, and big trucks, and these are predictably involved in much of the action.

Tight corners in tunnels can be especially tricky...

Travelling at the kind of speeds typical of this game, it doesn't take too much contact to cause a crash. Indeed, hitting stationary objects like walls and barriers is normally enough but touching any other vehicle that isn't travelling at a near-identical speed (i.e. your opponents) will result in a usually-spectacular accident, often involving numerous other vehicles as well. Whilst it was almost certainly the often-leisurely drives around attractive locales that Edge magazine had in mind when they compared Burnout to OutRun, it was surely the huge crashes that made them mention the original Need For Speed. I guess Criterion were rather proud of them too - each is replayed from several angles and gives a damage figure in dollars. There's even a 'biggest crash' category in the records screen, tempting you to cause them on purpose in pursuit of the record for each course!

A pleasant afternoon drive through town...

This can be tremendous fun as you might imagine, but believe it or not there is actually some incentive for avoiding accidents where possible, and that is what gave the game its name to begin with - the Burnouts! This is represented by a meter in the bottom-left of the screen and there are a few ways of gradually filling it - getting 'air' by driving over bumps and hills fast enough, driving on the wrong side of the road (without crashing), drifting around corners, and each time you have a 'near miss' - in other words, nearly hitting civilian cars. Once the meter is full it's available to use by pressing the relevant button which causes a significant increase in speed for... about thirty seconds if memory serves. This does of course greatly increase the likelihood of a crash as not only do the other cars come at you faster, but it also makes cornering a lot more difficult. When they do come though, they can be among the most spectacular crashes of all!

Face Off! Defeat the Roadster and you can use it!

They certainly do look impressive as well, whether you cause them on purpose or not! In fact, everything looks good here really - the cars, courses, roadside, and scenery are all fantastic and superbly detailed, but this kind of stuff is the least we expect from 21st century gaming - what impressed me the most was the smaller stuff. You can change the colour of your chosen vehicle and the races take place at various times of day so the lighting there is great as well, and the attention to detail is superb - weather effects, your car's shiny windows and bodywork reflecting the sky and parts of the scenery, its drive wheels kicking up dust if you veer off track, its headlights reflecting off the road surface during wet night races, your indicators flashing when you turn corners, shadows appropriate to the sun's position, other road user honking at you if you get in the way... it's all here!

It's not all asphalt-based action...

Even better is the sense of speed which was the best I'd experienced at the time and still impresses now, especially when using the 'bumper cam', and even more so when using a Burnout - everything gets a tinge of blurriness as your pace immediately increases, reflections pass over your car faster, tunnels approach scarily, it's pulse-quickening stuff! And then there's those crashes... The crashes are undeniably a visual high-point - sometimes your car will just stop dead, other times roll numerous times down the street, it can get wedged under trucks, stuck between two buses; hitting a crash barrier or something can even send you spinning through the air, but the results are usually the same for all vehicles involved - smashed windows, dents and scratches all over, and a million different types of crumpled bodywork. I'm no physicist but I'd say the vehicles also behave exactly as they should in these high-speed collisions too which is perhaps even more impressive.

A Stealth Viper cruises a lovely coastal road...

As entertaining as the crashes are though, I always found them a bit overrated. Games like Destruction Derby were created specially with crashing in mind but Burnout, however good its crashes may be, was designed as a racing game first and foremost, and in this regard it's unreservedly fantastic. The Championship mode probably won't take too long to complete but all the courses and cars unlocked therein are available for use in Single Race and Head to Head modes which helps prolong the lifespan of this fine game, and then there's the hitherto unmentioned Special Mode. To start with this only offers race replays and a music player but it's also possible to view the credits, access a Survival mode (challenges you to race for as long as possible without crashing), Free Run (lets you race a course without any other traffic around), Free Run Twin (two player version of Free Run), all of which is unlocked in much the same way as the courses and cars.

Head-on crash is imminent!

Even all these play modes will only last so long though. As with any other driving game, the thing that will or won't keep you playing after you've seen everything is simply how enjoyable it is to play, and this is probably Burnout's greatest strength. Part of the reason for this is the racing system which is surprisingly fair - if you race well but crash occasionally, your opponents will usually be very close by, constantly jostling with you for position, although not too violently. If you race really well and rarely or never crash, they'll be way behind, and if you crash every thirty seconds you'll never catch them up, or at least the leader! Something else that's very welcome here is the fallibility of the other racers - they all make mistakes and frequently crash, often right in front of you, leaving you with a pile of wreckage to try and steer around unscathed! Possibly a tougher enemy than your opponents though, is the rather harsh time-limit which necessitates fast but careful driving in order to make each checkpoint. This, however, may sometimes seem impossible due to the design of the courses.

Oops, chose the wrong side of the road on this bridge...

They're not badly designed you see, just realistically, and since real roads are not designed for 150mph races, there's lots of potential problems. As well as the many, many normal road users who move around as real drivers would, changing lanes, turning at junctions, stopping at traffic lights, etc, there are plenty of tight (and often blind) corners, and even things like crossroads to try and catch you out as well, frequently successfully. The control of the cars is one of my favourite things about this game though. Each is noticably different and testing the limits of them all is great fun - push any of them too hard and they'll complain! The floopiest one is also, not incoincidentally, my favourite, but even the weediest ones will give in eventually. What all this basically means is, although it can often seem like a tough or even unfair game, it's more than possible to navigate each course quickly and safely. It's definitely not a game to simply hold down the accelerator and bash your way around each course, but careful as well as skillful driving make playing it a thoroughly entertaining experience.

A crash may be imminent here too...

First impressions of Burnout are ultra fantastic - the very superb presentation, flashy graphics, eye-melting speed, and of course the crashes! Criterion definitely nailed it from an aesthetic point of view, although the oft-crticised in-game music is very much background music and quite inconspicious. Get past the initially dazzling exterior though, and second impressions of the game may put you off a little. It seems as though you crash every thirty seconds without being able to do anything to prevent it and numerous angry shouts are sure to leave your mouth while playing. Stick with it though, and you'll soon see that practise absolutely pays dividends. Time spent with the challenging courses and flawlessly-handling cars soon becomes immensely enjoyable, you'll start finishing races without having crashed at all, laps times will continually come down, and Burnout soon becomes one of the most exciting, addictive, edge-of-the-seat racing games ever seen at the time.

RKS Score: 9/10

Special Note: I tried to make a gameplay video but apparently my PC isn't powerful enough to run the emulator and the recording software at the same time, so I tried finding one that someone else had already made but there weren't any of acceptable quality so... until it is, here's a trailer