Thursday, October 26, 2006

Burnout: Revenge

Y'know, I don't post a whole lot about games. I do mention that I'm a gamer, but really, in order for me to post about something, it has to make a big impact. Not many games do that anymore. But that has changed recently, as I discovered Burnout: Revenge.

The first "race" I played, it wasn't about getting first in line with the other guy, there weren't even any other racers on the track. Just traffic. Rush hour traffic. The timer gives you forty seconds to wreak as much havoc on the streets (designated in property damage costs) as you can. Each time you ram another car, you get a boost in time, so you can ram more traffic. I first played that after a mean commute, and it was a magnificent release.

The next "race" was a crash. That's it. Nothing else. Your goal in this one is to run at top speed into a busy intersection and cause as much property damage as you can. You get a massive pileup pretty quickly and can rack up millions of dollars of damage (primarily because cars keep ramming the pileup, and then you can explode your car which is hopefully in the middle of the junk heap).

They do have actual races, but even though the goal is to get across the finish line first, the methods are frequently to ram the other car off the road and see him crash spectacularly in slow motion. It's also fun to bounce another car into your opponent, causing him to crash and burn in the same manner.

The locations are beautiful as well. They aren't exact depictions of actual cities, but they clearly evoke the city you're supposed to be visiting. The first one is in "Sunshine Keys," a very Miami-ish setting. The next one is "Motor City," a very Detroitesque city. I've also gone through something that completely resembles northern LA (complete with going over the Hollywood hills at speeds exceeding 100mph), a Roman-ish city and some Swiss mountain area.

No other game in recent memory has given me such sustained glee. I found myself laughing frequently, not so much because something was funny, but because it was just an insane amount of fun. Heidi even played two sessions (the beat-down-traffic one and a crash), looked over to me and said, "Great, just what I need; crack."

This is a great game for anybody who hates traffic (and who of us doesn't). Right now it's a rental, but I've already decided to save up enough to buy it.

3 comments:

heidi said...

can we play again tonight?

Tracy Lee V said...

Sheesh. Road rage in a game. Craziness. I have enough of that in real life, I don't need to recreate it. But sounds like you're having fun, so go to it!

John said...

Ah, but in a game, it's a healthy outlet for road rage. In real life, you can't ram through a line of cars at a stoplight, but in a game, it's your goal! It really reduces pent up rage when you can take it out on digital opponents.