Burnout Revenge (Xbox) review "Right in front of you a car blocks your way, you slam on the gas, sending it flying. The next rival is only inches away you swerve to get onto there side. You’re even with him with only one way to get ahead of them. You slam hard into the car’s side sending it flying over the cliff. With one racer out of the way you floor it, and pull into victory lane. This is the world of Burnout Revenge. It’s the fourth game in the Burnout series, which is renowned for its satisfying car crashes and amazing s..."

Right in front of you a car blocks your way, you slam on the gas, sending it flying. The next rival is only inches away you swerve to get onto there side. You’re even with him with only one way to get ahead of them. You slam hard into the car’s side sending it flying over the cliff. With one racer out of the way you floor it, and pull into victory lane. This is the world of Burnout Revenge. It’s the fourth game in the Burnout series, which is renowned for its satisfying car crashes and amazing sense of speed. Revenge adds enough new content, ideas, and improvements to separate from Burnout 3, without losing the Burnout feel. Plus, it takes out that stupid DJ.

The biggest reason why Revenge is so amazing is its thrilling sense of speed. As you tear down courses at over two-hundred miles an hour, and it feel like you’re going that fast. As you cut in and out of traffic, it blurs beside you, headlights leaving a neon streak in the air. Additionally, as you tear through a tunnel you can hear whooshing all around the car. If you’re unfortunate enough to crash at these speeds, you’ll a get a pretty view of your car hurling down the streets eventually stopping totally wrecked.

This excellent sense of speed also carries over to key parts of races as you’ll have to make a lot of decisions quickly. One part of this is the new shortcuts in which your reactions are constantly tested as there all off of turns causing you to be swerving hard to get into them. These short cuts are filled with jumps, allowing for scores and position increases. You may remember the same sense of speed from Burnout 3, with the addition of having to dodge traffic on top of it. Now can get “revenge” on them by slamming them back. At anytime during any of the games plentiful modes you can slam same way traffic out of your path.

If you slam traffic properly you can send it spiraling into an opponent, which is one of the many possible takedowns in Revenge. Takedowns separate Revenge from other racing games and allow us to what heart desires, smash and send opponents cars over mountains, bridges, or anything else around. It’s immensely satisfying to watch an enemy’s car explode as slams head on into a tanker. However, these takedowns work both ways, and your opponents are more then willing to return the favor. Revenge uses rubber band A.I. so you’re never too far ahead or behind, and it always comes down to the final stretch. This can be especially frustrating if you’re passed late in the race, after leading its entirety. You’ll probably have to restart the entire race, but thankfully the load times are short.

Before you restart or start a race you’ll have the option of choosing any car in your selection. You can race in trucks, cars, and SUVs. Each vehicle has excellent handling and controls. The game uses arcade controls, which allows you take sharp turns at high speeds. Unfortunately, the car selection is too complicated, and they aren’t category separated despite being ranked in boost, weight, and speed. In general, you want the fastest car that is the hardest one to get to. Additionally, Burnout uses no car licenses, so you won’t be tearing up the strip in a Mercedes or Ferrari. That said, the car models are pretty original and look really sharp. They have a lot of unique details and excellent selection, so besides the Ferrari logo you won’t miss licensing..

Sure, racing cars is a lot of fun, but what’s more fun is smashing and crashing. Burnout’s has always featured an excellent crash mode, which the goal is to crash and cause as much damage to innocent traffic as possible. To increase explosive damage you’ll land on cars after flying off ramps, slamming into tankers, or flying over bridges. Another way to increase damage is multiply your score by hitting more cars and doing more damage. The biggest explosions are caused by aftertouch, which damages other cars, and powers up based on wreckage. Unlike Burnout 3, you can now have multiple crash breakers, and it can be used in races to give your opponents explosive payback. Its human nature to be entertained watching cars explode, so Crash mode is one of the most entertaining modes in videogame history.

So the main purpose is to basically crash, smash, and tear up the strip. The main hub for this will be the World Tour, which consists of 169 events. Events are categorized by rank that increases by earning stars. World Tour is further divided by location and type of race. It gives you plenty of opportunity for crash events, burning laps, races, road rages [get a certain # of takedowns], and traffic checks. The locations are much darker then Burnout 3, and give a greater impression of racing through city streets. In addition, every course has eight trophies to unlock by racing perfectly, performing vertical takedowns, causing a lot of damage, and handing out explosive payback. It’s unfortunate that the menu system is this categorized as it takes way too long to shuffle between ranks and areas to find new races.

Thankfully, there are no such problems on the multiplayer side of Revenge. You can choose to play split screen or go online to takedown some opponents. You’re able to compete in any of the modes from single-player, but by far the best are the road rages and races. The road rages involve you and opposing players smashing AI cars into everything, and whoever gets the most takedowns wins. Multiplayer crash involves running the same course and competing for the top score. Revenge uses a matchmaking system similar to Halo 2, where you select a gametype and are paired with opponents of a similar skill level. It works well, and eliminates the bulk of online issues. There are still people who quit in the middle of a race, but that’s nearly impossible to control.

Burnout Revenge is about what people want and crave. Whether it’s annihilating five O’clock traffic, watching cars fly off cliffs, or blowing your vehicle up in the middle of a traffic pile, Burnout Revenge delivers on all fronts. Its graphics are spectacular and sound is excellent. It has a ton of excellent little touches that have come to be expected in the series. Burnout Revenge manages to top Burnout 3, and is one of the best games available for Xbox.

Community review by ghostyghost (August 18, 2006) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.