Lawrence.com

When I was eight years old, I loved playing with little Hot Wheels cars. I loved crashing them into each other. I loved making them drive off make-shift ramps made of open notebooks resting on pencil jars, careening into my pretend oblivion. If you gave me those little cars now, I'd instinctively do the same. But luckily Criterion made the Burnout series for people like me.

To bring you up to speed, Burnout was a decent arcade racer focused on incredibly fast racing and glorious crashes. Burnout 2 made an entire mode out of crashing and quickly garnered a cult following. Burnout: Takedown added Road Rage mode that focused on shoving your opponents into a mangled fate while taking all the racing, crashing and glorious rage online. Certainly Burnout: Revenge had a lot to live up to.

For the most part, Revenge succeeds in polishing rough areas of Takedown while adding new flavors. Now, you can "check" traffic. This simply means that any small or medium-sized cars on your side of the road that get in your way you can bump off the road or into opponents, creating a welcome variable to the fast-paced mayhem. Bumping an enemy into a wall is a great way to score a takedown, but it's even more satisfying to toss an innocent little coupe in the path of the enemy, forcing him to make sudden, fatal decisions. And of course the slow-motion close-up camera angles show you every inch of the destruction you've caused. This is arcade racing at its best.

One of the elements that the series has lacked in the past is a sense of verticality and alternate routes. It's not a new concept and it would've greatly benefited the Burnout universe. Criterion finally rose to the occasion and added many more opportunities to get major air, usually preceded by finding alternate routes that are mostly indicated by flashing blue lights. Sure, making the alternate routes so obvious takes away from the satisfaction of discovery, but the game is way too fast for it to be designed otherwise.

The sense of flying high and multiple routes carries over into the celebrated Crash mode, making its obvious return. The worst part of Burnout Takedown was having automatic score multiplier items in certain areas of the crash junctions, making your path predetermined in order to earn the gold. Revenge gets rid of these items returning to the multi-optioned junctions of Burnout 2, but this time checking traffic and using ramps effectively play a major role. In many junctions, the major intersection may follow two minor intersections. In this case, you should try to check some small cars into the minor intersections before making your big crash into the larger pit. There is a Madden-kickoff-meter-influenced turbo start, where you must stop a meter in two areas to determine how much power you have out of the gate. It seems a little out of place, but doesn't hurt the mode. With such complexities, the new Crash mode takes a solid step forward.

The Crashbreaker, the manual detonating of your vehicle, returns to Crash mode, but also makes its debut in later gametypes in the single player races. When you wipeout in a race, you can still steer your crashing car into enemies coming up behind you for the aftertouch takedown. But in some games (Crashbreaker Race, Road Rage or Eliminator), you can even detonate your crashbreaker, essentially taking the skill and reward out of the awesome race modes. Sure, it looks amazingly cool and is fun the first few times you do it, but the fact it takes little skill to impede your enemies' progress and that not even they can use it on you trivializes the thrill of Burnout racing.

The main new mode is TrafficAttack, where the new checking traffic element is glorified. It's one big wonderland of bumper cars, increasing your time and score by causing minor pileups all along the track. Unfortunately it's really boring and comes nowhere near the innovation or exhilaration of the Road Rage or Crash mode innovations of Burnouts past. Even Attack's multiplayer counterparts don't add too much to the fun factor.

Oddly enough what makes Revenge a great evolution of the series are the subtle gameplay refinements like multiple routes, better jumps, better track designs and more intricate crash junctions. These things more than make up for the dud that is Traffic Attack.

Multiplayer online is still a smooth operation. Now, ranking systems have been put in place to make matches more even and even keep a worldwide eye on the best players (like the systems we've seen in Halo 2 and Rainbow Six 3). Refinements have been made to the new Crash modes so that everyone doesn't have to wait forever for their turn. It's mostly lag-free and one of the best online experiences on a console.

The graphics have been majorly improved on a couple levels. No, it's not necessarily sharper or smoother, but rather grittier and more innovative. Where Takedown tried to copy real-life cars, Revenge boasts Criterion's own designs, which are some of the best original vehicle designs seen in any racing game. Also, the locales are a little dirtier, urban and more grimy. It certainly complements the mood of the game much better than the previous look.

The sound effects and loud, motor-driven ambience is as clear and effective as ever, but the emo/power pop bands that permeate the soundtrack simply do not fit. The four-chord unoriginality of the current MTV2 Buzz Bin does not capture the feeling of vehicular devastation.

In the end, Revenge does improve the Burnout formula enough to warrant a $50 receipt. Although if you're new to the series and strapped for cash, do not hesitate to buy Takedown at its current $20 tag.

Graphics: A

Sound: B+

First Play: A

Last Play: A-

Gameplay: A

Overall: 91% A-