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Burnout CRASH! Review for Xbox 360

Burnout CRASH! Review for Xbox 360

CRASHing as Fast as You Can

Burnout fans know exactly what to expect from the series: amazing tracks, insane challenges, and slo-mo crashes. But after 2008’s Burnout Paradise, the series took a bit of a break. Now it’s back with Burnout CRASH!, but this isn’t exactly Burnout as you remember it. While you probably won’t find something with the depth and replay value of the old Burnout games, CRASH! is an interesting experiment nonetheless, and the results aren’t all bad.

Burnout CRASH! takes longtime series mainstay Crash Mode and expands it into a full game. However, instead of head-on slo-mo collisions, the game delivers a top-down world populated with cars, buildings, and objects to destroy with your car. In the game’s main mode, your job is to create a four-way pileup in such a manner that no cars are able to get through. You start your approach form a side street, and you’ll have to crash strategically into a single area, blowing yourself up every few seconds to continue to cause as much mayhem as possible.

Burnout CRASH! Screenshot

The game’s main mode is actually quite challenging, and I was surprised at how quickly things can go wrong. See, the twist here is that if you let more than five cars escape from the intersection, the game is over. And since you need to earn a certain amount of stars by reaching some lofty score thresholds, this mode can be quite frustrating. However, if you can time that first crash just right and cut off as much traffic as possible, you can earn some stars and unlock new modes.

Each course has three modes associated with it, offering a total of fifteen earnable stars. And while you would think that the initial mode would be the most fun, I actually found it to be quite tedious, with the secondary modes taking up most of my gameplay time.

Burnout CRASH! Screenshot

The first of these is a sort of free-play mode that gives you 90 seconds to cause as much destruction as possible. There are no limits as to traffic blocking, and you can completely ignore passing cars and go after buildings and landmarks as you see fit. This mode actually allows you to be strategic rather than forcing you to worry about cars slipping through your blockades, letting you plan how to conquer a map and maximize your score. This mode definitely should have been the game’s main mode, as the traffic-blocking initial mode feels more like a “challenge” mode, almost superfluous in comparison.

In addition, there is a third mode that challenges you to destroy as much as you can within a time limit and keep the resulting fires burning for as long as possible afterward. It’s not as fun as the timed free-for-all mode, but it’s still pretty entertaining—it’s a better way to spend your time then fretting about cars that slip through traffic, after all.

Burnout CRASH! Screenshot

Despite my misgivings about the initial mode, Burnout CRASH! as a whole has a sort of addictive charm that compelled me to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to get just one more star. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was sucked into its light-hearted arcade format.

However, that doesn’t mean the game is perfect by any means. If you are playing on the Xbox 360, you might be tempted to check out the Kinect mode. Do yourself a favor and just leave it alone. I can kind of see where the developers were going with the Kinect support, but this control scheme just doesn’t have enough precision to allow you to effectively stop traffic or hit targets. Oh, and jumping to explode gets old fast. Especially if you live in a condo and have downstairs neighbors. (Sorry, guys!)

Burnout CRASH! Screenshot

The sound is also a problem at times. In the main mode, there are periodic radio announcements that play every time you go through a level, and they’re always exactly the same. Normally this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but when the game is centered around re-playing levels over and over to get higher scores and earn more stars, the repetitive radio sounds gets incredibly agitating—especially when the radio voiceover has the worst fake hillbilly accent I’ve ever heard. Seriously, it will make you want to remove your own ears. On the plus side, though, the game does feature some cute nods to oldies music—”Dr. Beat” by Miami Sound Machine plays whenever an ambulance is near, for example—and the background music is inoffensive.

Burnout CRASH! is not the game I needed—or even wanted—from the Burnout series. Still, it has enough charm to stand on its own, and it’s a fun little diversion. The actual driving element is minimal, but if you like puzzle or arcade-style games, Burnout CRASH! is right up your alley. It’s certainly charming and addictive, and for $10, it doesn’t get a whole lot wrong. I’m just hoping that the next game that comes along with the Burnout name sticks a little closer to the roots of the series.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.5 Graphics
Visuals are simple but effective. 3.7 Control
Traditional controls work well enough, but Kinect support is a disappointment. 3.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Background music and oldies clips sound great, but a repetitive voiceover ruins the overall sound scheme. 3.5 Play Value
The game certainly has pick-up-and-play appeal, and the Autolog feature may provide some friendly competition, but Burnout CRASH! isn’t one you’ll play for too long. 3.6 Overall Rating – Good
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • Burnout CRASH! packs countless hours of reckless chaos into an easy to pick up but difficult to master gameplay experience. There are three explosive game modes available across 18 crash junctions in six unique locations, each requiring different skills and strategies to maximize damage and destroy everything in sight.
  • With a variety of player vehicles to unlock, high-value targets to seek and destroy, and crazy special features to discover, players will be hooked on an adrenaline-fuelled rampage to the top of the Crashwall.
  • Burnout CRASH! is the first Xbox LIVE Arcade title to feature a game mode designed exclusively for Kinect in which two teams can use gestural controls to play on one television in a party battle!

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