As with any racing game, control plays a key role and, thankfully, the controls in Burnout could not be tighter or simpler. You use the left analog stick to steer, the triggers to accelerate and brake, and the X and Y buttons to change gears when using manual transmission. Once the "Burn" meter is full, you can turbo-boost with the A button. You can switch between the internal and external cameras by pressing the white button and check out the rear view with the B button. The type of vehicle you choose (easy, medium, or hard) affects the difficulty of the game, with the easy vehicles handling well but lacking horsepower and the medium and hard vehicles offering muscle at the expense of handling.
Since most automobile manufacturers are wary of having their vehicles smashed up in a video game, Burnout does not feature licensed wheels. Instead, it offers several unlicensed mean machines, from sports cars to trucks. Although you can select the transmission type and change the color of the vehicles, you cannot tweak or modify performance – this is a pure arcade racer, after all. Likewise, repairs are unnecessary, as the vehicles do not retain damage, nor do crashes hinder their performance.
Burnout has all the basic racing modes, including Championship, Single Race, Head-to-Head, and Time Trial, plus unlockable modes like Face-Off, Survival, and Free Run (no traffic). Races occur during daytime and nighttime in fictitious spots across the US and Europe. The gameplay consists of passing checkpoints and clearing laps before time expires, all while trying to gain boost and beat your opponents to the finish line. Each time you perform a dangerous feat, such as driving through oncoming traffic or narrowly avoiding a collision with another vehicle, you score points and slowly add boost to the Burn meter. Additionally, racing a perfect lap (no crashes) completely fills the meter with boost. Once the Burn meter is full, you can kick into overdrive and leave your opponents in the dust.
Whenever you crash, your boost is reduced and you are forced to watch a drawn-out replay of the crash, regardless of its severity. Unfortunately, while the post-crash replays are entertaining, they disrupt the racing. And although the AI drivers crash often, they recover quickly and are never too far behind when you are in the lead.
Although the game assigns a monetary value to crashes and awards points for daring maneuvers, you do not receive anything for accumulating points or damage, except possibly a spot in the records section. Among other things, the records keep track of the highest scores, fastest laps, biggest crashes, and best/worst drivers.
Burnout offers a good amount of replay value, but, of course, your mileage with it will vary. To start, you must unlock courses (more than a dozen) in Championship mode to race them in the other modes. Championship mode itself is fairly lengthy and challenging, consisting of several Grand Prix events and a couple of marathons. You can earn extra vehicles by winning challenges in Face-Off mode (head-to-head races against an AI opponent) and try your hand at Survival mode, where a single crash ends the game. Time Attack lets you try to top your best times, while Head-to-Head offers split-screen racing for two players. Finally, you can save your favorite crashes and peruse them in the "Crash Replay Theater".
Built upon the popular RenderWare platform (used by such games as Grand Theft Auto III and AirBlade), the graphics in Burnout, though improved from the PS2 version, are sub-par on the Xbox. The vehicle models are not terribly impressive, but they do reflect their surroundings and deform quite nicely. Small graphical details, like windows that shatter during crashes and skid marks that result from powerslides, keep things interesting. A blur effect accompanies turbo boosts and helps dramatize the crash replays. The best aspects of the graphics are the varied course designs, traffic-clogged streets, sharp lighting, and blistering frame rate. (Note: Although the back of the game's case bears an HDTV logo, Burnout does not support 720p or 1080i resolution, only 480i/480p.)
Burnout makes terrific use of the Xbox's Dolby Digital 5.1 capabilities, discretely mixing music and sound effects through all audio channels. It also uses the center speaker fully, unlike many other Xbox games. Furthermore, when whizzing down highways and freeways, you can hear the traffic zip from the left and right and front to rear. The subwoofer is put to excellent use, supplying extra boom to the crashes, roar to the engines, and thump to the music. Sadly, you cannot replace the dynamic music (the theme changes according to how well you are racing) with songs stored on your system's hard drive, but you can adjust the sound levels and enable a headphone option.
If you're looking for some cheap racing thrills on the Xbox, give Burnout a spin. There are certainly better racing games available – in terms of graphics and gameplay – but not all of them can match the intensity of this one.
-Cliff "Funkadelic" O'Neill, 05/16/02