Burnout: Revenge Review

The Burnout racing series is far from subtle, this much is clear.  It has always been about aggressive white-knuckle racing, usually in places you wouldn’t normally find it occurring, like busy city streets.  The fourth title in the series, Burnout: Revenge focuses on delivering this very kind of action, not to mention plenty of vehicular combat.  Basically, when it was released, the game met with lots of praise and really, one could say that it still stands tall as a rather fun retro game in its own right.  Why is it so great, let’s find out why below…

First things first, “Revenge” really plays up its crash mechanics system, meaning that you’re often prompted to instigate wrecks.   This is a title that basically doesn’t seek to do anything lightly; it smashes its way into your head with loads of modes, each one dealing with some aspect of crashing cars.  With no less than 169 events in the single player story and 11 ranks to ascend through, the game itself presents plenty of content to sort through during the wild ride.  Don’t think that this is a simple case of one trick pony-ism though, because there’s much more to this one than meets the eye.  Moreover, there are no less than 77 different vehicles in-game too, with a robust multiplayer with offline mechanics, which is something that a lot of modern racers can’t / won’t do.

What “Revenge” did was improve on Burnout: Takedown, which surprised a lot of gamers.  Aside from the fact that each track is jam-packed full of stuff, including alternate routes that might serve as either shortcuts or pathways to take down enemy racers, there’s also the visuals to consider.  Even despite the fact that the graphical system for this game is clearly outdated, it still looks rather fantastic too.  Smooth gameplay and lots of graphical flair at high speed with nicely detailed environments are only half the story.  The developers increased the complexity from their last outing, inserting a lot of action at the street level, which again, means that you’re forced to react in various ways to prevent collateral damage.  Again, it’s still pretty fun to play, despite the fact that there are loads of other graphically pristine AAA racers out there.

All in all, Burnout: Revenge is a fantastic racing game from the PS2 era and catalog that definitely deserves some attention.  Whether or not this is your first encounter with it or a repeat visit, there’s still lots to do in this crash-centric driving experience.  Most people will probably want to just straight into “crash mode”, where they’re tasked with creating multi-car pileups and the goal is to make them as bombastic and extreme as possible.  Clearly, this is a perfect activity for those weekend get-togethers with friends and lager, no?  Conversely, if you’re just looking for a retro racer that’s built on a fairly unique concept with “teeth”, Burnout: Revenge is definitely one of the most promising candidates to place on your list of older games to check out.