Burnout: Revenge

Well, the latest in the Burnout series is just as excellent. By now, I would assume most people have read the reviews. IMO, most people should have copies, too. Simply an awesome game.

The graphics, sound, and handling have all been improved. The crashes are even better, and the new crashbreaker is awesome. During races, when your crash, you can pop off a crashbreaker to take down your opponents. Man was I psyched the time that I took out all five enemy cars at once. Had done 4-way kills before, but I finally got a 5-way.

The crashbreaker lends a whole new style and consideration to the race types in Burnout. For example, there is the "Crashbreaker Road Rage" mode. If somebody takes you out, you can quickly smack your crashbreaker to take them out, too. But if they're too far away... you just lost all your boost to catch up. I found that you generally didn't want to use crashbreakers in road rage — the enemy cars are almost always ahead of you (and usually, you use the crashbreak to kill off cars behind you by waiting for them to drive up near your wrecked car).

The crash mode lost its replay, though. And that sucks. When you're going for that perfect crash, you kinda want to see how you goofed up. The new "Traffic Attack" mode is also pretty difficult until you learn that you have to bounce cars into buses and trucks to get that maximum time extension. Even then, it can be hard, so this was one of my least favorite new modes.

One thing that I definitely noticed is that the highest end cars are not as fragile. In Burnout 3: Takedown, zooming around in a formula racer was always a dance on the edge of death. But in Burnout Revenge, you can smack them around quite a bit more which makes the races much less frustrating.

And a kudos to the new medal and rating system. It means you're going for both technique and crazy driving to max your score. Nice.

At this point, you have to ask yourself: buy it now for the Xbox, or wait a couple months and buy it for the 360? I couldn't wait...

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