“It’s a car-crash-car world” – Burnout Revenge

As a child, I played with a lot of toy cars. I gave many of them names, but it was mostly as a way of distinguishing between them as I ran races and pushed them down ramps to see how far across the room they would travel. I never imagined them as having drivers inside them; they were just entities which had taking part in these activities as their purpose. I wonder if the makers of Burnout Revenge at Criterion had similar experiences.

It’s hilarious to me that Burnout Revenge is the one game among 2005’s #1s to happily trumpet a British Board of Film Classification ‘U’ certificate on its cover and spine. Universal – suitable for all. For a game which regularly tasks you with setting up traffic accidents and then watching cars plough into growing mess of fireballs and debris. In a world in which these cars have drivers, there is no credible way that they all get out of there alive. Likewise for drivers of all the traffic you are encouraged to swipe off the road at high speed in its races. It’s even set in immediately recognisable real-life locations, even if they’re missing their names; it doesn’t take much to figure out that Eternal City is Rome and Central Route is Hong Kong. Burnout Revenge is a mass-murder simulator. But thanks to our cultural attitude to cars and the care the game takes to never acknowledge human presence, it can place itself as nothing more than kids playing with toys. 

When it comes to what it does with those toys, the game caters to a toddler-like attention span, too. The menus are all dramatic sound effects and swooshing intros with lingering sequences of destruction. Career mode offers a tasting menu of brief, delicious experiences. Race a fast time one minute, set up a massive crash the next, then go on to challenge to takedown as many competitors as possible. In a different car each time, most likely. Even beyond that quick variety, driving is a constant flow of additional stimulation. Regular shortcuts are marked with blue lights so you always know you’re taking or missing them. Messages about specific things you’re doing good, great or awesome at pop up with reassuring frequency. And takedowns of rivals give you cut-away sequences of the carnage.

‘Checking traffic’, the swatting aside of non-competing cars like so many leaves on the breeze, is new, but the takedowns remain central to what Burnout Revenge does best. You’re at danger of being taken out yourself as you maneuver and sparks fly, and getting it right to squeeze another car against the wall is thrilling and satisfying. Or you can go for some of the more exotic, trophy-rewarded options like jumping over a ramp and landing on your opponents.

Burnout Revenge is shiny and slick and utterly focused on the excitement of bashing things into each other at very high speed. Its driving is completely abstracted and very effective at what it does, providing a constant ride of novelty and excitement. In doing so, Its aesthetic is remarkably consistent and thorough. The soundtrack with its encyclopedic selection of contemporary rock bands from Nine Black Alps to The Dead 60’s is relentlessly one-note, something even clearer on realising that it has more than forty songs but features the voice of just one woman, Animal Alpha’s Agnete Kjølsrud (who would go on to sing a song with 101 million views thanks to League of Legends). I just have to think back to Midnight Club 3 and the great feeling of plunging forwards to M.I.A.’s “Fire Fire” to confirm that there really is no need for that degree of narrowness. 

Burnout Revenge’s frantic invention in coming up with new ways to bash cars together is coupled with some of the same lack of imagination regarding potential audience and their preferences as I talked about in my Ridge Racer post. Having the childhood where I bashed toy cars together and was actually encouraged to do so surely helps in appreciating Burnout Revenge. That consideration notwithstanding, out of all of 2005’s many car game #1s, it’s the one that I enjoy playing most.

---

Top of the charts for week ending 24 September 2005:

• 

• 

• 

• 

•