Retro|Spective 129: Burnout

[Neon Ignition]

History in Games:
2001 - Burnout
2002 - Burnout 2: Point of Impact
2004 - Burnout 3: Takedown
2005 - Burnout Legends
2005 - Burnout: Revenge
2007 - Burnout: Dominator
2008 - Burnout Paradise
2011 - Burnout Crash!

Overview:
Easily the biggest new arcade style racing series of its generation, the Burnout series originally excelled in high speed racing against rivals before further expanding on the crash mechanics and eventually into the realm of open world racing. Vying for first place whilst narrowly dodging oncoming traffic as your boost bar rose, all whilst nudging a rival into a side railing sending it flying overhead in a shower of sparks became a standard moment in the series that went on to wrestle for the genre crown before EA brought it into the fold and smothered it to death with an NFS branded pillow.




Did you feel the need for speed or where you burnt out?

[Hirst]

I liked the first one as a competent home equivalent of the arcade game "Thrill Drive", but they went a bit silly as they went on. Was it the third one with the mode where the objective was just to cause a huge slow motion crash? I liked that but I didn't like the racing game itself much.

[endo]

Of all of them, I've only really played 3 and Paradise. I played 3 to death, particularly online, which was great fun. Had some very memorable sessions on that. 16 years ago though! WTF?

[wakka]

I played 1, 3, and the PSP one. I played a lot of the Paradise demo but never bought the full game, weirdly.

1 is the one that made the greatest impression, although it's unrefined and actually fairly basic compared to what came later. You don't read a lot of discussion regarding it these days, but at the time it truly felt 'next gen' in a way that a lot of other racers didn't.

The two main standout elements were the sense of speed, which was excellent thanks to a good draw distance, along with liberal motion blur and camera shaking when you were boosting, and the crashes. These went hand in hand. Because you felt like you were going really fast, the crashes felt all the more impactful.

Now, I love Ridge Racer, but when you crash in Ridge you kinda just prang off the wall and get slowed down. In this you properly collided with stuff, you felt like you actually CRASHED. There was a full-on slo-mo animation of your car disintegrating, and a proper sense that you had smashed one thing into another thing at high speed.

It wasn't intended to be an end in itself, like in the later games - you were meant to avoid it, so you could win - but it felt like something that I hadn't ever seen in a car game before.

It was a great idea - such a great idea in fact that they were then able to extend it into the Takedowns and the Crash Junctions etc further on in the series, and make it an even more central part of the experience.

It all started with those deliciously crunchy wipeouts in the first game, though. What a cool concept.

[charlesr]

Loved the first 3. Tried Paradise but bored without the direction. Similarly with Horizon really.

Gamecube force wheel worked on BO2 with feedback which was super cool

[charlesr]

I'm remembering that EA messed up the net code for the Xbox version in a massive way making it divert to their servers instead of the Xbox stuff.

[Mayhem]

Loved the first two, and then it got too arcade like for me, where you could rail grind more to get by instead of rewarding driving skill.

[DeathAdder]

Loved both psp ones and Revenge on 360. Couldn't get into Paradise. Kept taking wrong turns in the races.

The less said about the DS effort, the better.

[S3M]

For me this series is all about Burnout 2: Point of Impact & Burnout Paradise, best two in the series. A couple of the later Criterion Games do play like follow ups to Paradise, one seem to use the seem engine and assets.

[Asura]

I'm remembering that EA messed up the net code for the Xbox version in a massive way making it divert to their servers instead of the Xbox stuff.

EA did this for all their games in that era.

I think it's public knowledge now, but I heard at the time that the reason was because the normal Live implementation didn't allow them to turn games off. They wanted the ability to turn off FIFA 04 when 05 came out, etc.

[dvdx2]

I think 2 was the the best of the bunch (with a great OST and it was very playable), but In general i don’t they have aged too well. Revenge on the 360 was decent to, but I seriously lost interest when they brought out the ‘free roaming’ paradise.

[Dogg Thang]

I totally loved one of them... but can’t remember which one! It was on the XBox, I’m pretty sure. Maybe 3. But whichever one it was, it was just a huge amount of fun and the slow motion replays of the crashes were fantastic. There was a decent one on the PSP too but, again, no idea which one.

After those two games I can’t remember, the only other one I played was Paradise which I appreciated but didn’t love. The lack of a clear structure, especially within the races, just didn’t work for me. It was open world without benefiting from it in any way, in my view. Still, it looked great and handled well.

[charlesr]

I totally loved one of them... but can’t remember which one! It was on the XBox, I’m pretty sure. Maybe 3. But whichever one it was, it was just a huge amount of fun and the slow motion replays of the crashes were fantastic.

Sounds like 3

[Neon Ignition]

I can't really place what it was about Revenge that didn't work for me as well as 3. The two games aren't that dissimilar but it didn't gel as well and was why I gave Paradise a wide berth for a bit as it didn't appeal. Fortunately by the time I did the patches were in place before the DLC started to roll out and it was g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s

[Asura]

I can't really place what it was about Revenge that didn't work for me as well as 3. The two games aren't that dissimilar but it didn't gel as well and was why I gave Paradise a wide berth for a bit as it didn't appeal. Fortunately by the time I did the patches were in place before the DLC started to roll out and it was g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s

Revenge screwed up two things IMO.

Firstly, it added traffic-checking - the ability for players to use boost to smash through traffic instead of dodging it. I don't feel it was an improvement; it made the game less interesting, but the challenges required you to do it (the traffic became more dense).

Secondly, though, was that it came out in that era where all videogames had three colours - orange, grey and brown. Burnout 3 had a colour palette like a Sega arcade title; it was all bright blue skies, bright red cars, blueish tarmac, sunbleached buildings. It's not a coincidence that Burnout 3 was the last non-EA Burnout game (EA published it, but the game was pretty much finished when they bought Criterion).