Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Half Burnout 2, Half Carmageddon

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Raised 09/11/2004, 10:32pm PDT

Bodybag wrote:

It's not so much that the refreshingly intuitive right-trigger-as-accelerator setup is uncomfortable as it is the primal urge to virtually stomp the virtual gas pedal through the virtual floorboard.

I got the sarcasm detector all over that remark, hoping to hear a beeping which would signify that you have actually played a racing game since, well since the Super Nintendo. Also: no handbrake? Maybe I've been playing too many rally games lately, but at first that really threw me off. This game isn't "Need For Speed" arcade-ish, it's Daytona USA arcade-ish.

Was I wrong to give either of the previous Burnout games a pass? Because HOLY FUCK is this some white-knuckle shit. The sense of speed is INSANE. Activating your turbo boost is nothing if not visceral; there's this satisfying rocket-booster sound effect that rumbles, along with your screen, and your field of view morphs into fisheye cam. WOO I AM FUCKING FLYING *VROOM*!

Need for Speed: Underground, which came out a little under a year ago, still offers a much better blurry, tunneling speed vision. However, Burnout 3 races DO go insanely faster. I like to think that all these accumulated hours spent playing videogames have the Nintendo generation incredible visual analysis responsiveness (instead of atrophied muscles) that permits us to play games such has Burnout 3 which would probably cause the retina of anyone over 45 to melt down... But you know, Burnout 3 is almost more that I can handle. Once you get to race with the Formula 1 car and the like, shit just goes flying all over the screen and before you know it you're kissing that mudflap lady on the back of semi. Near the end of a 4:30min, 200mph race you'll be glad to finally see the "Finish" word pop on the horizon.

I've been playing this the last two days and I'm still not quite used to the sheer velocity of the game, which more often then not has me flying into stuff like concrete dividers and oncomming traffic. The crazy part is I'm still winning the races. One super-duper cool feature in the game is that wrecking doesn't necessarily close the road to victory, but in fact opens the road to REVENGE. You can fucking control how you wreck, so if you squander an easy lead by slamming into that goddamn commuter bus, don't fret! Put some enlgish on your ride's flaming carcass and slide it into the path of your speeding rivals. IN BULLET-TIME. Or, if there's no opponents to wreck into, just try to bounce your car off of as many world objects as possible to rack up sick combo points and get a turbo-boost bonus for when your car respawns on the road. You can potentially come out ahead after crashing. Genius. Of course, the optimal tactic is to straight-up ram your opponents off the road, which is a whole game all its own.

The stupid part is that the camera does no movement whatsoever that would allow you to actually see where your firery carcass is heading when you are in crash view. In Crash events this becomes a major irritant when you need to squeeze by an oncoming semi-truck and a heartbreaker (which cuts your amount of damage in half) to reach that much needed 4x mulriplier.

The racing modes are wicked cool, but it's the Crash Junction mode that unquestionably validates the purchase. Objective: Speed into a busy intersection and cause as much mayhem as possible. GO!

The only real downslide so far is the game's soundtrack of about 30 or so NuPunk it-bands and The Ramones. Then again it's all fairly upbeat and driver-friendly, not to mention that the mixture of highway courses and assmetal eerily mirrors the morning commute into ATL while listening to 99X, all of which are conducive to vehicular homicide. It's like I've spent years training for this game!

The soundtrack is awful. Makes you feel like you're 13, wearing braces and showing everyone at school how HARDCORE you are. And how about DJ Striker? Wow, that guy is RAD!!!!!11 (hint: visit the audio options)

Overall a very fun and addictive game, just wanted to put a little bit of sand in your wet vagina of a review.