Burnout: Revenge (Xbox)

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The game's visuals are stunning

Traffic Attack isn't quite the innovation that Crash mode was back in Burnout 2, but it's still an entertaining addition to the World Tour. A timer ticks down while you plough through as many vehicles as possible, taking them down yourself, or by sending them flying into other lanes of traffic and doing the dirty work for you. Once the timer hits 20 seconds you're up against it, with every take down adding vital seconds to the timer. It's a constant struggle, moving from one car to the next, like some crazed bull in Santo Domingo during July. It's fast, intense, action-packed stuff, that's for sure.

There's support for two-player split screen on both versions of the game, but online play also returns and it's the best way to play the game against real people. Road Rage is a team game online, and gives one team the task of finishing the race, while the other team must prevent them. The Crash mode is also fun online, but suffers slightly because of the lack of pre-crash flyover. Without this view of the road, unless you are intimately familiar with each course, you'll be winning on luck more than skill. The other modes work well, and the inclusion of traffic checking makes the online experience far more entertaining than that of Burnout 3.

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Playing with a group of friends is also easier this year, with a group system that has been borrowed from Halo 2. This allows you to move from challenge to challenge and remain in the same group. There's also a nice amount of stat tracking and online scoreboards, but the experience isn't without its problems. The biggest of which is the need to unlock everything again online. Even if you're an expert at the game, and have played the single-player mode for hours and hours, you start from scratch online. You have limited cars and courses available to you, and must increase your rank to open things up. You can increase your rank pretty quickly, but it's still something that experienced offline players will be frustrated by.

I think it's safe to say that we won't get a better looking game on current-gen systems. Burnout Revenge simply looks phenomenal. The game moves at a blisteringly fast pace, aided by a brilliant motion blur, and the frame rate rarely takes a hit, even on the PlayStation 2 version. Colours literally smack you in the face, they are so vivid, crashes look more spectacular than ever, and course variation is a step above previous games in the series. The new shortcuts make the tracks more believable and car models are more realistic in design than before, despite still being fictional. It's hard to do the game justice in words, it's just staggeringly good looking.

The game's soundtrack is a huge improvement over Burnout 3, with a collection of tunes that fit the game far better. I haven't felt the need to use it, but the Xbox version also supports custom soundtracks for those who can't get into the aggressive mix on offer. Gladly, the awful DJ from Burnout 3 no longer offers his words of wisdom during races, rounding off a great audio package.

The most fun racer ever? I think so

Something that must be mentioned is the rubber-band AI. This means that your opposition rarely stretch that far ahead or fall too far behind. In most games this would be a huge problem, as no matter your skill, you could be punished on the final corner. In Burnout the best part of the game comes from taking down the opposition, so, had you been able to pull large distances ahead this element of the game would have been lost. Sure, a last second crash can be costly, but keeping things close makes races thrilling from start to finish.

I'm glad I don't judge games by who publishes them. EA have an absolute gem of a game in Burnout Revenge, and anyone foolish enough to disregard it based on where it comes from is going to miss out on the pinnacle of gaming on current generation consoles. Despite being four games into the series, it's strange that no other game has come close to matching the sheer thrill that Burnout delivers. Revenge simply sets the bar that bit higher, to a level that will be hard to beat.

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