Burnout Revenge Preview

Gamespot has a preview of the next title in the Burnout series, Burnout Revenge. From the article: "When we saw Burnout Revenge at E3, Criterion compared this year's crash mode courses to holes you might play during a game of golf, complete with a simplistic teeing-off mechanic that determines how fast you get off the line, fairways--aka freeways--full of hazards (like cars you don't want to crash into...yet), golf green-like areas (such as intersections that ooze carnage potential), and a hole that takes the form of a moving "target car" that's worth loads of points if you manage to wreck it. These comparisons still hold true, but Criterion has clearly been hard at work refining and improving upon the crash mode since it showed it off in Los Angeles." Given how good Burnout 3 was, I'm looking forward to this.

Comments

Wow! What a great analogy!

[QuantumG]

If only they could make it as exciting as golf!

Pros vs Cons

[RoadDoggFL]

Unfortunately, I'm torn. You see, EA is far more evil than any game can be good. I shed a tear for missing out on Oddworld and the new Burnout installments but I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for actually giving money to EA. It's almost a shame, really.

Re:Pros vs Cons

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep strong. I have and will never forgive them for buying Maxis or destryong Earth and Beyond. F' Battlefield 2. F' Burnout. Via la Revolucion!!!!

Re:Pros vs Cons

[nc_yori]

Or maybe you could just get over it and realize that they aren't the only game making company out there with questionable business ethic, just one of the biggest.

If you like Burnout or Oddworld, then play Burnout or Oddworld. If you feel so compelled to tell us about why you irrationally dislike EA, submit an article with an actual explanation instead of talking about how they're "evil."

Moving on the actual topic:

I'm already excited about the game just from the fact that you can become airborne in parts of the game besides Crash Mode (or whatever it will be called). My friends and I have played Burnout 3 to death and the new one is already sold to me just based on that.

For any 3d enthusiasts out there, Newtek interviewed Peter Lake, one of Criterion's head Art honchos a while back about the making of Burnout 3.

Re:Pros vs Cons

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the games second hand. No money to EA and you get to play the games.

Re:Pros vs Cons

[buffer-overflowed]

Most of the offenses of EA that we care about are to their employees.

Market manipulation? Nothing new. Nintendo did it. Microsoft does it. Sony does it. Hell, they all do it.

Buyouts. Nintendo/MS are probably being the most "friendly" in how they do it(leaving the studios intact, game dev wise. Outside that context, remove MS), but they still do it. Everyone does.

I can't speak for Sony, but I know Microsoft and Nintendo are great places to work, and I've never heard any complaints out of any of the other big dev studios(Infogrames excepted but that was due to layoffs)/publishers. This isn't the case at EA.

Re:Pros vs Cons

[rylin]

On a tangent, maybe you should stop to consider how very nice and awesome it is to work at McDonalds or your average grocery store.

Now you tell me.. What's for dinner tonight?

Re:Pros vs Cons

[LSD-OBS]

Most of the offenses of EA that we care about are to their employees.

And anyone who works in the industry will confirm that it's the exception to the rule to find a game development company that *doesn't* squeeze as many hours out of their employees as humanly possible at crunch time.

EA is certainly a great place to work. Their employee perks are the best in the industry. The ruckus of last year was confined mainly to *one* of EA's many studios.

Disclaimer: I work in the games industry and I have friends at various EA studios, and I'm reflecting their sentiments.

Re:Pros vs Cons

[dsyu]

And anyone who works in the industry will confirm that it's the exception to the rule to find a game development company that *doesn't* squeeze as many hours out of their employees as humanly possible at crunch time.

While this is largely true, the point of all the ruckus over EA last year (to me, at least) is that EA has the money and means and experience to alleviate some of the crunch, but largely through laziness, chooses not to.

I've worked for smaller 3rd party game developers, and the crunch is there, but when you've got a company of less than 100 people trying to make their first title, crunch is understandable. Crunch on the Nth rendition of Madden seems, well, less understandable.

EA does have a lot of nice perks -- you could certainly do worse in a job in the industry. That said, I have friends who, thanks to EA, became completely burned out and no longer work in the industry. IMHO, EA would do well to take the money they're spending on expensive gyms and fishtanks and spend it on a little research into how they can make the development cycle a little more sane.

Re:Pros vs Cons

[yoyhed]

You could buy the games used, then they'd get no more money..

Re:Pros vs Cons

[RoadDoggFL]

I'd still feel dirty, but I'm considering borrowing Stranger('s Wrath?) from a friend.

awesome-o

[Rolling_Go]

criterion did a spectacular job on burnout 3. i can only hope they improve from 3->revenge like they did going from 2->3, although i honestly have no idea what they can do to improve it that much. also, if you do like burnout 3, i suggest trying to play it using a force feedback wheel...it ups the level of insanity that's already there by a fair margin (just make sure the wheel's secured damn good and well).

Re:awesome-o

[klui]

From a purely aesthetic perspective, I noticed that Burnout 3 had faux far-east characters while the screenshots for Burnout Revenge has real far-east characters.

Re:awesome-o

[rylin]

Maybe they could disable the annoying DJ by default.

Re:awesome-o

[cowscows]

What they need to do is be smarter about all the damn loading screens. It really kills the energy of the game sitting through as many of them as you have to. Especially in crash mode. I did some of those crash levels a dozen times in a row trying to get gold. There's no reason I should've had to sit though a couple loading screens each time I reset the crash to try again. Everything should be there in memory, what are you loading for?

That was, by far, the most aggravating part of Burnout 3. All that being said, what an awesome game. Even my girlfriend loves it. She bought herself a smaller xbox controller for it. Games that I can get her to play with me are automatically winners in my book.

Re:awesome-o

[NeMon'ess]

They can start by removing the tracks with pillars that lanes actually dead-end into. Those go against the spirit of the game. It isn't a racing sim, where I have real control over the car. It's no fun to powerslide around a corner and crash by bad luck. Even worse is when a race on that track starts, like Kings of the Road, the AI bumps the player around and possibly into pillars. But restart the race and perhaps that time the bump will miss the pillar. If skill can't save the player, and it's just a matter of chance, that's stupid.

Also, they need more, if not all of the single-player tracks, available for multiplayer. My friend and I have played out all the multiplayer tracks, but half of the single-player tracks aren't available to us. How dumb is that?

They also need it to remember my audio settings. I don't like their 40 tracks that all sound like weak Alien Ant Farm and 311 alternative-light ripoffs. When I do single or multiplayer I want my five albums of Offspring, and I want Burnout to remember that.

Re:awesome-o

[Anonymous Coward]

I assure you that thai writing is just as far-east as japanese.

Re:awesome-o

[CDLewis]

>although i honestly have no idea what they can do to improve it that much

Saveable/shareable crash replays. I wanted those in BO3 and was disappointed they weren't implemented. I'd love to see them in BORevenge, but it looks like we're not getting them there, either.

Golf crash mode.

[Decessus]

Everything sounds like it's going to be great except the crash mode. I don't know if I like the idea of using a "launch control." I just want to be able to hit the gas button and go. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but this just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

AI?

[syrion]

Burnout 3 was fun for the first few hours of play, but it quickly got old, for me. Rubberbanding AI made unlocking the tons of special content a real pain, and versus mode can only go so far. Road rage was really the only multiplayer mode I found interesting, actually--and since the tactics varied only in whether you chose a heavy car (custom muscle...) or a fast car (assassin super...), the potential was exhausted fairly quickly.

In the end, I was glad I paid only $5 (yes, legally) for the game. If I'd paid $50, I would have felt ripped off.

Re:AI?

[NeMon'ess]

The AI doesn't rubberband in the traditional sense. When it's winning, it drives more conservatively and lays off the boost, just like a human in the lead might. When the player is leading, it drives more aggressively to catch up. But since it plays by most of the same rules as the players, the AI crashes more often when trying to catch up. Just like players statistically do when boosting.

Ever noticed the AI fighting with itself? It does all the time, and that's how it's possible for a human or AI car to win by 15 seconds just because 2nd and 3rd place "decided" they were more intent on crashing each other than catching up to the leader.

Re:AI?

[syrion]

I have been in races where I have an 18-20 second lead, and a few seconds later will get a "on your tail" note and lose boost because of it. This is notable in the one-on-one races. It essentially makes the game one of "crash him once and then go the rest of the way without crashing, and don't boost to try to build a lead." If you boost, you are liable to crash, and you can come out of a crash with a twenty (or more) second deficit, when the actual crash should have cost you five at most.

Re:AI?

[NeMon'ess]

Interesting, in my tens of hours of playtime I've never seen anything so dramatic. A crash only costs me 5 seconds, unless I don't have boost, because then it takes another second or two extra to get back to full speed.

Even though the game says he's right on your tail, checking your rear view camera proves that's BS. The game just flat out lies most of the time with that warning. I figure it's a bug. You're still 20 seconds ahead. Just keep power sliding the turns and you'll keep your boost up. You can still spend some of it to build a lead, but fact of the matter is the cars in back can crash each other and earn lots of boost allowing them to catch up. That's just the way the game is, and it has to be like that. It's how humans in third place are able to catch the AI leader, by crashing the car in second place and getting boost. Frankly I find races where I ditch the AI early are the least interesting.

Re:AI?

[wattimus]

Actually, I don't think this is entirely correct - at least it doesn't seem so from my experience.

I believe AI cheats to some extent. I've literally seen AI cars drive through (matter occupies matter) civilian vehicles. This is most noticeable when you have finished a race and you see the AI cars coming to the finish line - they will drive through any existing vehicles.

Also, I have seen the dramatic swings that syrion mentions. I will sometimes lose up to 10 seconds on a crash to the AI, but when they crash I am lucky to gain 2 seconds - this is particularly true in 1v1 races.

Though I do see some of what you say, especially in 6 player races with the AI. It is very easy to build a large lead, as long as you don't crash. I think there is rubberbanding AI, just that the rubberbanding also works between AI cars. (so maybe AI cheats versus civilian vehicles, but not against other AI cars?)

Andy Hunter!

[Khakionion]

The preview video available at the official site features the music of Andy Hunter, a badass DJ.

If that's the direction they're going with the soundtrack (which, IMO, was the only real weakness of Burnout 3), then I'm sold.

Re:Andy Hunter!

[Anonymous Coward]

the soundtrack for burnout 3 was part of what made it a great game. It was nice to get something a little bit different for a change, some of us out there actually like to listen to real music WITH GUITARS!!!!! but on reflection, the dj was annoying as hell and should not make it into the new game

screenshots look exactly the same

[snorklewacker]

Granted, it's hard to make Burnout prettier than it is already ... Let's hope the sequel has better physics than the "matchbox car physics" of the original. Buses that hit a curb and flip up onto their end, for example...

I have burnout 3, and it's certainly entertaining (except for the DJ and 2/3 of the idiotic tracks), but I'll definitely wait for burnout 4 until it's in the $20 bin before getting More Of The Same.

Given how many tracks in this game are repeats with different cars that handle barely different from the others (compacts and coupes, anyone), there's really only 1/3 as much game as there really are. It's still not an overly short game, but I still would have felt cheated if I shelled out $40 for it (I got it bargain bin).

I can attest

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, this is a great game and it's improved from the previous version! if you liked Burnout 3, you'll definitely not be disappointed by Burnout 4. The crash mode is sweeter and the racing is sweeter. they fixed/removed much of the silliness and added/improved to the game. heck, i think they even might have fixed the massive amount of online problems from last year.

Hope its better than Burnout 3

[British]

I mastered Burnout 2 with lots of practice, and enjoyed it. I was able to power slide aronud intersections easily once i learned the tracks.

Burnout 3, that's where I got stuck short of the top-level cars & tracks. I tried a preview race with the F1 racecar and was literally crashing every 6 seconds. Or I was doing donuts just trying to get the hang of the car.

Online mode was incredibly bad. You got booted out of rooms(ie when the race is about to start) due to communications problems as often as i crashed. EIther that, or players kicked you out since you didn't have the F1 racecar.

It wasn't like this in Burnout 2. The game got so frustrating to find the right spot to do drift turns, that i never got the hang of it(either too soon or too late).

My very last race was in the docks area and I slammed straight into Optimus Prime. That's when I got rid of it for store credit. Only to see a copy 2 months later used at my video store for 2/5ths the price I paid.

I better rent it first. If it's too hard, no money lost.

burnout 3 roks!!!

[samuraizero]

Burnout 3 Roks!!!! Online ps2 games suk anyway as its too splintered and awakard but when its played one to one with a mate i wld love to play b3 on xbx live thgh......... Also b3 is a bit too hard........ but thats its only fault..........

Burnout 3.11

[Anonymous Coward]

I played with this game at E3, and it's weak sauce. Basically, if you would have taken screens from Burnout 3, and Photoshopped "Revenge" over the "3", you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

These "vertical takedowns" sound cool, but they're just bland. You just land on top of another car. It's not like you're pulling stunts out of the new Dukes of Hazzard movie and going airborne to slam into a another car midair...you mosey along, hit a 2-inch ramp, and possibly land on the roof of another car.

For a game called Burnout "Revenge" the game's AI opponents are remarkably passive and indistiguishable.

Traffic Attack mode is just pathetic. All you do is run into the back of cars. Think Gauntlet and Pac-Man fused together. You run around smashing into the back of traffic to get extra time, with every collision bearing all the visceral impact that Pac-Man colliding with a pellet has.

It looks like they give you even more Aftertouch in Crash Mode for Burnout 4 which is a bad thing.

This game's too much like Burnout 3 for me to pick it up. With all these online rental stores, Blockbuster not charging late fees and Ebay, you'd have to be almost insane to pick this up at $50.

couples with force-feedback steering wheels?

[ClioCJS]

As a couple who owns two $80 force-feedback steering wheels, let's hope they fix their Shit.

Burnout 2: 2 steering wheels work simulteanous - race the wife.
Burnout 3: only 1 steering wheel works at once.

Waste $80 of mine?