Ok apologies for being a little late with this one... I'm sure we all know the Burnout franchise by now, race around, take out the opposition, do spectacular crashes and underneath it all nothing's really changed, but as you're probably aware by now they've taken the game in a new, much more open direction. Gone is the win this race/series to unlock the next one and repeat until you complete the game syndrome that many racing games, in fact many games of any genre follow. Instead when you start the game you are plonked right in the city - the full city at that, you can go anywhere right from the off. No need to complete the next event/series/level etc to unlock the next bit. The city itself is vast and there's literaly hundreds of secrets to unlock, whether they be jumps, shortcuts, hidden areas and billboards. You can spend hours just driving around exploring, seeing what you can do and where you can go without even touching the events. You're probably getting the picture by now, this game is about freedom. Freedom to do go wherever you want, whenever you want, compete in whatever events you want, whenever you want. This even extends down to completing events. No tracks or courses to stick to. Just, when necessary, a finish point that you can get to by whatever route you choose to. As for the events themselves, they're located at most of the road intersections with a coloured marker on the map to indicate what type of event it is and a little tick to denote when you've completed it and consist of standard Races, Stunt Runs, Road Rage (takedown a specified number of cars), Marked Man (avoid being taken down) and Burning Routes (car specific time trials). One type of event you may notice that's missing from the list if you've played Burnout before, is the Crash mode. It's still in there but has been completely revamped and works in quite a different way. Unsurprisingly, Showtime mode, as it's now called, has become very freeform too. Now you don't have specific Crash events, but every road on the map is a Showtime opportunity. Whereas before Cash mode was set on predetermined road layouts and traffic patterns, now you just head for a road, find a suitable well populated stretch, enable Showtime mode and go for it. The mechanics of this mode is quite different as well, now you have to press A to roll towards vehicles a bit like the Crash Breaker of old, when you crash into vehicles you get points and more importantly, your Boost meter goes up, which allows you to roll again. This way you can continue crashing until your Boost meter runs out. On the face of it I really thought they'd spoilt this mode, but when I started playing it I soon realised how much more fun it was, especially when you can keep on rolling for miles with a bit of luck and a steady flow of traffic. The game also makes use of the Vision camera, as you progress through the game and gain licenses you can take your picture to go on the license. Ok not that impressive really but any use of the largely forgotten peripheral is a bonus. What's more when you play online you get the opportunity to take a snap for the benefit of the person that performs a takedown on you, rude gestures are of course completely obligatory. Then of course there's the online modes. Again no whisking you off to a lobby, just invite some friends in while you're driving around the city, then you can setup a series of races to compete in, work through some of the challenges or just explore together in Freeburn mode. While you're in Freeburn mode you can try to outdo each other on certain specific challenges that appear on screen, such as longest drift, most airtime etc. The races are a straightforward, first past the finish post race from point A to B using either predetermined points or ones you can edit yourself. The challenges are a bit different and will set you a task you either have to complete individually or by working together. They may range from the simple, meet at a certain point marked on a map or, complete a certain jump at a specific location, or just complete a specified objective by any means you can, wherever you are or want to go on the map. I have to say initially though I wasn't drawn to this game at all. It's a problem with games that give you a lot of freedom, initially things can seem a bit overwhelming and you do miss having a structured format. But gradually I found myself getting sucked in and it wasn't long before you were enjoying the freedom the game gives you. The city itself looks fantastic, very detailed and with an 'out of town' area and various other places like airfields, quarries, dams and railroad you can drive along, all help to add a bit of variety. Talking of variety there's a lot of different cars you can race, in all shapes and sizes and suitable for different types of events, depending on their speed boost and strength. Again they are very detailed and have a fantastic damage model the way the cars crumple and bits hang off or break, it's a joy to watch. I've played this online now quite a bit and it works seamlessly, I'm impressed. It's borrowed certain ideas from the likes of Test Drive Unlimited, but in this game they actually work. There's one thing a game of this much freedom could do with though and that's the ability to navigate across the map a bit more easily, they could have accomplished this in a couple of straightforward ways. One would have been the ability to jump to any event you have already unlocked. Yes it's nice to be able to drive anywhere if you want to, but as you complete the game and events you need to do are spread further afield, sometimes it would just be nice to be able to go straight to them rather than drive halfway across the map. This is especially true as there is no option to restart an event, which again, early on it doesn't matter so much as there's usually plenty of events available wherever you end up after trying an event but as you work your way through the game, your opportunities become less frequent so being able to go straight to an event could have been pretty useful. The other way they could have done it is by allowing you to set a waypoint. Again when you want to get to a specific event, the minimap is useless and bringing up the full map takes you to a completely different screen rather than an overlay so it feels a bit clunky and disjointed, when all you want to do is a quick check of the map to be sure you're heading in the right direction. This is quite simply a lovely game though, a joy to play whether offline or online. Yes initially it does take a bit of getting used to the new format, but once you're over that you realise how much this game has to offer.
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