GDN: Burnout Legends Review

As if PSP-owning fans of racing/driving games were not well enough catered for already (Wipeout Pure, Midnight Club Dub Edition, Need for Speed, GTA:LCS, Twisted Metal...) along comes another PSP-ified version of a console favourite. This time it is dangerous driving-sim Burnout which gets the handheld treatment. A "best-of" compilation of the first three Burnout games, Burnout Legends is arguably one of the best games available on PSP at the moment, despite a few niggles which do not detract from the overall quality of the game.

For those unfamiliar with the Burnout series of games, Burnout Legends offers both a world tour mode, featuring both crash and race events, and single events allowing you to use the cars and other vehicles you have unlocked on any of the tracks available to you. The highlight of the series has always been the emphasis on dangerous driving and wanton destruction, and on that front this incarnation does not disappoint. Featuring 100 crash junctions and 75 world tour race events, not to mention a wide variety of trophies, signature takedowns, extra cars and other goodies to unlock.

The crash junctions involve a small section of track with a lot of traffic, a few pick-ups (turbo, extra cash, extra explosions) and maybe some ramps. The objective is to cause as much mayhem as possible, as measured by the amount of “crash dollars” you earn, which is basically the number of vehicles that crash as a result of your driving, and the amount of damage done to them (causing an oil tanker to explode earns you big money). Earn above a certain amount and you get bronze, silver or gold medals. Earn a very high amount and you unlock a “crash headline” – collect 10 of these and you are on your way to unlocking the fire engine, the ideal thing to cause some major havoc on busy highway…

The world tour mode consists of a variety of race events on tracks located in non-specific USA, Europe and the Far East locations. For each of 5 classes of car, you must complete a certain number of events in one class to unlock the next higher class. Earn as many gold medals as possible to unlock better cars, hidden tracks and other rewards. The events are varied, with a basic 3-lap race, eliminator (last-placed racer is eliminated each lap), road rage (race around a track trying to crash as many rival cars as possible without wrecking your own car), pursuit (play as a cop trying to ram a target car off the road – very much like Need for Speed Hot Pursuit), and grand prix. In all of these events you are actively encouraged to drive as dangerously and aggressively as possible, with the reward being more turbo boost, more points, and more takedowns (causing a rival car to crash). Drive on the wrong side of the road, drift around corners, and drive as close as you dare to the approaching traffic, and you will reap the benefits. Also, a great feature of the Burnout games is that even if you crash, you still have a chance to cause someone to crash too – activate “impact time” and you can guide your wrecked car, in slo-mo, into the path of oncoming rival cars in an attempt to share your pain with them (!).

So for fans of the series who really didn’t need to read the last two paragraphs, comes the essential question – is it as good as the other Burnout games? Pretty much. The game looks the same, feels the same, plays the same… and the drive to unlock more cars and get as many gold medals as possible is more than enough to carry you through the game quite a long way. Unfortunately, the cars have little to differentiate them other than appearance – even the weight/speed ratings from previous games have gone, leaving the minor differences between the cars feeling even more superficial. However Burnout has never been an accurate simulation of driving, it’s all about the crashing and the speed – which makes it easier to pick up and play, without having to worry about performance ratings and tuning. This is not a game for hardcore racing sim fans, it’s purely about having fun and there’s no shortage of fun to be had here.

Problems? Well the graphics aren’t as good as Burnout 3. The high speed and its blurring effect, the need for a more detailed physics system than the better-looking Wipeout Pure, the high number of cars on the track at one time, all tax the PSP a bit too much to be able to deliver the same graphical quality seen in other racing games currently available. Also, occasionally the scenery is not drawn quickly enough, especially when racing at high speed, and you end up driving towards a featureless blue area for a second or two until the screen is updated. This does not happen too often, although when it does it can be annoying as this game requires quick reactions to dodge oncoming traffic and it’s worrying when a mysterious blue fog obscures your vision! The quality of the game is such that these minor glitches can be forgiven, though.

Burnout fans may find that this game is a little easier than the others – I certainly never got 91% completion in Burnout 3 – and this is undoubtedly to suit the start-stop nature of play which seems to be a core principle in PSP game design. If you only spend an hour on the way to and from work playing this game, then it’s nice to be able to progress a little quicker than the console equivalent where you could easily spend many hours on a game in one day. Personally I spent far too much time in and out of work playing Burnout Legends so I tended to progress very quickly when compared with the Xbox version. However achieving 100% completion of this game is a lot more difficult than you might think, due to a new feature of the series which brings me nicely on to discuss multiplayer.

Using the ad-hoc wireless feature, you can play single race, party crash and double impact modes with up to three other players, and you can also use game-sharing to play a single track with one other player who does not own a copy of the game. So far, so standard. New to the series is the “Collector Challenge”, which is the only way you can collect every car in the game. Each series of cars has five “collector cars” (imaginatively numbered one to five). Each UMD comes with one collector car from each class which you unlock by winning gold in the eliminator event for that class. Of the remaining four, three collector cars can only be won by beating an opponent in a one-on-one race using the Collector Challenge feature – each player picks one of their collector cars, and the winner unlocks the loser’s car for themselves. Collect four collector cars and the fifth is automatically unlocked for you.

This is a nice idea as it encourages multiplayer gaming, and even provides a small reward for it, however it does mean that unless you have at least three other people with the game to play against – and you may need more to get all the cars – you will never fully complete the game. Some people mightn’t care about this, some people will. For the perfectionists out there, you had better convince your friends (insert hyperlink to definition of friends here) to buy the game or you will be frustrated at not being able to get the magic 100%.