Boy, if you love first person shooters, and racing titles, then the Xbox 360 is the system for you! Now that the system has been out almost half a year, you can actually choose between a few different games. This particular game, Burnout Revenge, is already available on current-gen systems, and it goes up against other racing powerhouses on the 360 such as Project Gotham 3, and Need for Speed Most Wanted. Does it stack up? It’s a must-have if you have never played a burnout game before, but if you have, it’s probably not worth your hard-earned $60 (US dollars).First, you’ll want to check out our review of Burnout Revenge for the PS2. Everything there is still applicable, so I’m going to focus mainly on what’s different in the 360 game, and I hope to help you decide if the next-gen version of Burnout is a money investment worth the next-gen price tag.
There were just a handful of minor feature changes when adapting the game for the next generation in addition to the unlockable achievements. The “start meter” at the beginning of a race has been removed. This was the meter that gave you a little boost, or blew up your engine. I didn’t miss this feature, as I thought it only added headache - not strategic value - to the current-generation version.
They added some crash junctions - for you crash junkies. I prefer the racing so this wasn’t a big selling point to me. They didn’t add any new tracks, which was disappointing to say the least.
You now have the ability to save/upload/download crash clips - little 30 second movies you can playback and send to friends of your amazing crashes. This was also something that seemed slapped-on, and for me, didn’t add much value to the overall package.
Lastly Xbox live will keep track of rivals, and you can gain new rivals, and get special notices (and achievements) for laying the smack down on an online rival. This is nice, but I haven’t found too many of my “rivals” in my online playing time. I will say, however, that this does make me look forward to playing online - I can potentially get some pride points - and create a few real-life rivals by destroying folks online. This was a nice feature addition to me, but didn’t affect core game play.
On the 360, the graphics have been tweaked. They now look better when you compare side by side, but for someone like me, who hasn’t played Burnout for a while, I didn’t really notice a big difference. The cars have a higher poly-count, and will now get scratched up paint-jobs, and when they do wreck/explode MANY more pieces come flying out. The lighting was also given more emphasis, bloom effects and lens flares help add to the realism. Everything runs without slowdown or stutter, and it’s just as “edge of your seat” fast as the previous versions, so that’s a good thing.
This one is a hard one to give a score to. On one hand it’s just a rehashed port to cash in on some extra money for the 360 version of the game. On the other hand, if you ignore the whole “it’s a rehashed port” thing, it’s a decent, even very good, game. They didn’t add enough features to make it a re-buy if you already own it, so I have to knock a few points off.
Final Verdict
Burnout Revenge for the Xbox 360 is not a bad game - in a vacuum it’s actually quite good. If you haven’t ever experienced the thrills that are the Burnout Series, you won’t be disappointed by picking this one up - I’d even say that you MUST own at least one Burnout game for your Xbox/Xbox 360. You’d just be better served spending ½ the price and getting the Xbox version since they are so similar.
Score
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