[a shaky foundation.]

burnout is a racing game. it kinda sucks. there is very little else to say about it beyond that and yet here i am about to say many things about it. because this game was saved from the annals of obscure 6th gen mediocrity and miraculously spawned a series of games that are all far superior to it, off the back of one little feature. and because of that it is Historically Significant and thus i felt the need to play it for the first time in the year of our lord 2022.

maybe i'm a bit off the mark calling it a "little feature" because the crashes in this game are basically the only thing that sets it apart from being the most generic racing game of all time, and also there was a pretty decent emphasis put on them. but compared to the later games with their crash modes and far more detailed damage physics, the crashes in this game feel like a paltry little addition to the racing formula. and yet, as tame as they feel now, they were the main selling point back in 2001.

honestly they're kind of a gimmick that breaks the flow of gameplay, further exacerbated by the frequency with which they happen because the crash "detection" is super oversensitive and will often wreck you from a light tap. later burnout games improved this by adding features like aftertouch and crashbreakers, but here they're just kind of annoying as all you can do is watch your crash get replayed from different angles while your opponents fly past after you slightly scraped a car. it all feels very purposeless, something that was bound to age poorly because its only draw was "look how cool the crashes look with our 2001 technology."

aside from the crashes, burnout plays much like an arcade racing game - as in a literal arcade game - translated to consoles. actually my friends were surprised it was not literally an arcade port. you've got a few tracks, a small selection of cars graded by their "difficulty" to drive - just like sf rush! - and there's even a constant countdown timer in races which is extended by checkpoints. tacked onto this is a means of progression in the championship mode, which consists of four 3-race "grand prix" events and 2 "marathon" events. completing each grand prix unlocks a one-on-one "face off" event which earns you an unlockable car.

and that's pretty much it! the game is very barebones in terms of content. you have 5 generic cars unlocked at the start, and there are 4 unlockable cars - two of which are competitive, whereas the other two are large, heavy, impractical vehicles that are basically just for "fun" only they aren't even good for that since they crash almost as easily as any other car. ultimately the unlocking of cars is kind of irrelevant unless you want more variety, since the muscle car is unlocked from the start and it's arguably tied for the best car in the game.

aside from that, there's a fair amount of tracks, but only 5 unique locations. the game pads itself out using variations that are reversed or at a different time of day, although they also have slightly different layouts so they feel reasonably "different" to drive. the designs of the tracks are honestly pretty solid, although brought down by extremely questionable scripted traffic decisions. the traffic patterns in this game are pre-set, meaning that there will always be traffic in the same place on each track depending on what lap you're on. of course criterion apparently thought it would be funny to frequently do things like putting two cars crossing an intersection at the same time or a passing bus blocking it completely, which are nearly impossible to avoid. realizing that the traffic is scripted and that these things were done intentionally as opposed to just being bad luck made them more infuriating.

of course i also have to talk about the "marathon" tracks, which combine all the courses in a given region (3 american tracks, 2 european tracks) to form one massive track. they're a neat idea! i think it's cool to have all these interconnected courses as a sort of endurance race, taking 12 minutes to complete the euro marathon and 18 minutes for the usa marathon. the problem comes when one crash near the end can force you to do those 12-18 minutes all over again, even if you drove completely perfectly the whole way until then. because at that point the marathon races stop being "a neat idea" and instead become a thoroughly miserable experience.

yes it's time to talk about the rubberbanding. it is extremely blatant. later games would at least offer you the illusion of making a gap, since they constantly remind you how many seconds you are ahead (or behind). this game does no such thing. no matter how fast you are, the opponents will be right behind you. if you crash, you WILL get passed unless you're lucky enough that the ai crashes into your wreckage. but maybe even more egregious is that once they get far enough ahead of you, the rubberband snaps. see, the ai is actually kinda neat in that they also make mistakes and crash into traffic which helps equalize the races. the problem is the traffic only spawns around the player, because why waste processing power calculating the paths of cars that the player can't even see? what this means is that once the ai is too far away for traffic to spawn, they can just speed off without worrying about crashing and get farther and farther away with no hope of catching up.

rubberbanding aside, the actual racing mechanics of this game are occasionally fun but mostly pretty mediocre. the driving physics aren't the worst i've played in a racing game, but they tend to be slippery and imprecise, especially when you're trying to drift, and very numb otherwise. there's not really much else to it. you can't take opponents out like you would in burnout 3, but you can perform a pseudo-takedown by shoving them into traffic, which is about as exciting as this game gets aside from when you're boosting. boosting is probably the only thing that sets this game apart aside from the crashes, and naturally became another one of the series' signature mechanics. and here we find another problem with this game.

your boost meter, filled by driving in oncoming, drifting, and near-missing traffic, fills WAY too slow, and is very easily taken away by a single crash. also, you can only start to use boost once the meter is full. so you barely get to use boost - i tended to get boost once per lap if i was lucky, and occasionally i'd go a whole race without getting to use it at all because whenever the boost bar was full or nearly full i'd get screwed by traffic and lose it all. which sucks because it's when this game's driving really gets fun. evidently, the later burnout games realized this, and allowed & encouraged far more frequent usage of boost, resulting in altogether more fun gameplay. good job criterion!

there is another mechanic at play with the boost here, however. if you burn through the whole meter without letting off the boost button, you do a "burnout" which by default restores the boost bar to about half. if you do so and also stay in oncoming traffic the ENTIRE time, it will actually fully restore your boost, meaning you can keep going and chaining burnouts together. which is neat in concept but also goads the player into making dumb decisions while trying to chase that high, since the fact of the matter is there's very few situations in the game where you can actually use a full boost bar nonstop without crashing, and even fewer while staying in oncoming. but even knowing that doesn't stop you from trying because boost = fun = happy and it ends up leading to heartbreak when you crash and now have no boost at all.

from a technical perspective, the game is nothing to write home about. its best aspect is its solid 60 fps framerate, which helps elevate its sense of speed and fluidity, no doubt aiding its novel perception in the eyes of the gaming press circa 2001. this comes in exchange for graphics that are exceedingly average in a post-gran turismo 3 world, alongside a very generic aesthetic style and ui that certainly doesn't shake off the feeling that this is an acclaim-published budget title. to its credit, the environments and different time of day variations look fairly nice.

it's a miracle that boost does feel as fun as it does considering there is almost no visual or audio feedback - you've got the plainest looking meter youve ever seen, no flames from the exhaust, no burning sound effect or really any change besides more motion blur and the music fading to a thumping heartbeat. the engine sounds are very flat-sounding to the point where i don't remember a single time i even noticed them.

speaking of the music, it doesn't really help fill the void left by the sound design as it's some of the most utterly inoffensive and bland "racing game music" i have heard in a game. it wasn't bad or annoying at any point but it also made basically zero impression. there was also a pretty wack attempt at "dynamic" music mixing. i noticed multiple times when the music went silent for a moment before returning in an attempt to loop. additionally each location has a "normal" and a "dramatic" music track, and it abruptly switches to the latter usually after crashing on the second or third lap. the way it switches is really jarring and pulled me out of it when i was actually kinda vibing to the normal music.

i'm grateful to the original burnout for setting the foundation for the series that would eventually produce imo the greatest racing game ever made. but i'm gonna be 100% real: there is just no reason to play this nowadays. maybe if you just want to experience the tracks... but aside from that there's basically nothing here that isn't massively improved upon by the sequels. not even really a weird quaint early-series charm to it. it's basically a nothing-game. you can complete it in 4 hours and there's very little reason to come back to it afterwards. god bless acclaim for being desperate enough to let this happen and also get a sequel.

4.7/10

[ambition and lost potential dragged down by a joyless core.]

let me get this out of the way. i'll readily admit that this game is... not good, to say the least. yet it has an odd effect on me where i can't help the fact that i'm just strangely drawn to it and can't stop myself from going back and trying it out every once in a while. even if i invariably stopped playing it the last time because it just pissed me off, leading to my eventual motivation for writing a review

apb is an open world quasi-mmo shooter in which players take the side of criminals or enforcers in the game's fictional city setting and partake in team-based missions, in which a group of players from one faction attempts to complete some objective and a group of players from the opposite faction are dispatched to oppose them. these missions are somewhat repetitive, and the objectives amount to little more than driving/walking to something, pressing the use key, and waiting, but the competition makes it entertaining enough as long as you're not being curbstomped. completing these missions awards you standing with contacts (which unlocks weapons, vehicles, upgrades, clothing, etc.) as well as money (which can be exchanged for goods and services), thus forming the game's progression. there's other window dressing - like open-world crimes such as mugging that criminals can commit to earn extra money, while enforcers can witness them and hunt them down - as well as the notoriety system which occasionally results in a player having a bounty for about a minute until they get unceremoniously murdered. but really the missions are the only thing that matters.

obviously one of this game's biggest draws that everyone talks about is the customization - and with good reason, as even today, very few games have matched the level of personalization that this game allows. in your character's appearance, their clothing, and even their vehicle, there's a vast array of options you can choose from, and you can decorate everything with custom designs (though this ability is somewhat limited without a premium subscription). there's even an auction house where players can sell the things they've created for in-game cash. but seriously, if there was a standalone version of the game that was JUST the various editors with all the options unlocked, i could spend a ton of hours on just that. and the music editor is one of the most novel ideas ever and i LOVE playing with it and making little midi-like ditty versions of songs that people will hear upon every infrequent occurrence of me killing someone. i hope the few people who die at my hand enjoy coheed and cambria, because they're getting to hear a recreation of a few seconds of the outro of "three evils."

now besides the incredible customization, the game doesn't particularly excel at anything, and anyone whos played it is likely aware of its various flaws. one of the biggest issues i personally take with this game is how agonizingly slow the progression is. the game entices you with so many items you can customize with, as well as numerous weapons and vehicles that make you more effective in battle, but in order to unlock anything you have to level up through chains of contacts spread throughout the game's two "action" districts (financial and waterfront) by completing missions for them. this can take quite a long time until you reach the things you want to unlock - especially when you have no opposition and thus reduced rewards, which is more common than you'd think. there's not a HUGE amount of people playing this game, and they tend to congregate in one district instance - usually financial, which means if the next contact you need to go through is in waterfront, you're often SOL.

speaking of players, the vast majority of the people playing this game now are very skilled players who have been playing for countless hours over years. now this game doesn't really have many issues with hackers, but you'll feel like you might as well be dealing with cheaters with how hopeless you are against more experienced and better-equipped players. sure, some part of the gap is based on skill, and you can eventually "git gud" enough to perform decently even with very basic gear, but it requires a lot more perseverance than most people have when you spend most of the time beating your head against the brick wall that is the playerbase. sure, the active playerbase being good at the game isn't inherently a flaw of the game itself, even if, from a pragmatic perspective, it does make it less fun to play. but hell, even if there were more new, less-experienced players, the matchmaking certainly doesn't try very hard to put them together. so there already aren't a lot of newcomers and those that do show up are quickly driven off by this, thus perpetuating the issue.

the starter weapons aren't awful (the STAR 556 is actually quite good), but the progression feels very linear in that the more you play and the more money you have, the better your weapons and upgrades. they're not so much different or playstyle-changing as much as they are just... better. and when you have to go up against all these people who have better things, you start to feel a little hopeless and the game starts to feel a little not-fun. and of course, when you look at the massive "armas shop" that sells all sorts of high-powered weaponry for real cash (as well as the "premium" subscription that lets you progress faster, among other benefits), the issue starts to be somewhat compounded. yes, being a free-to-play game following its revival (pried from the corpse of realtime worlds), it's no surprise that it has a bit of a pay-to-win problem. but to be fair, it's not the WORST. hell, the directly-cash-bought guns aren't even that OP anymore. the bigger issue is really the upgrades you unlock later in the game which take forever to get to, but slightly less forever if you got that premium ;). but it's still kind of a problem as it can easily turn off new players (which ties into what i said earlier).

mechanically, the combat is serviceable but unremarkable. there's no headshots or anything like that - as long as a bullet touches any part of someone's body, it does the same amount of damage - and the weapons feel fairly impactless as well. grenades get pretty annoying considering how much damage they do and how high-level players can throw them like a fucking quarterback whereas your sorry tosses go about 10 feet in front of you. driving feels loose and floaty, the vehicles have weird acceleration curves, handle collisions strangely (there are phone booths that inexplicably explode your vehicle instantly if you hit them) and since the physics are serverside, if your connection is less than fantastic you get some mad input lag, making all of this even worse. the maps aren't necessarily poorly designed gameplay-wise, with most objective areas having a number of routes to reach them, as well as various opportunities for cover or flanking, seemingly to reduce camping and force players into fast-paced close-quarters combat. still, there are unfortunately some exploitable areas that kind of kill that effort. the more obvious problem with the maps is that they feel so lifeless, empty, unmemorable, and boring, in stark contrast to the characters that inhabit them. there's really nothing worth doing outside of missions, it's just roads and grey or brick walls.

the weird silver lining to all this (aside from the customization) is that stylistically, the game is pretty rad - people don't talk about the killer visual aesthetic of the clothes, characters, and the loading screens, or that sweet, sweet theme music that now only plays during character creation. neither of all the lore content buried in the game, from the character bios to the mail messages contacts send you periodically as you work for them - both of which are read by probably nobody. hell, even the ui is pretty clean-looking (even if occasionally obtuse). but ultimately this exemplifies how such tiny details like this do little to soothe the pain in the game's core, and why i don't blame anyone for not paying much notice to them. it just leads to an experience where i really want to like the game, and i'll try to get into it time and time again, but the gameplay is just too much of a drag for me to play for more than a short while. i'm sure this isn't unfamiliar for many others who have tried it as well, and it's truly a shame knowing what this game was trying to be and what it could've possibly been.

3.9/10

[the taming of the dudebro.]

in many ways, dirt 3 is a refinement of the formula introduced with dirt 2. having heard fan complaints about the direction taken in the previous game, codemasters here have brought dirt 3 into a sort of middle-ground between dirt 1 and 2, going back to a more subdued, euro-esque rally experience as opposed to the sensationalized festival vibes and general offroad mish-mash of two years prior, while still maintaining a certain level of x-games grandeur.

in line with its shift back towards a rally-centric approach, the presentation of dirt 3 is noticeably toned down compared to its predecessor. while codemasters' distinctive "3d menu" style of the era is still very much present, the menus are much slicker and cleaner compared to the flashiness of dirt 2. many welcomed this withdrawal from the very americanized skater-bro vibes of dirt 2, in exchange for uhh... pyramids. and some regular triangles but mostly pyramids. personally though, i miss the personality of that game. the immersion and atmosphere of that game were hardly matched in the racing genre, and though i understand why some would find it obnoxious and just want to drive, i found myself a bit less invested and more disconnected from the action.

on a technical level, this game isn't quite the leap dirt 2 was over 1, but it's still noticeably improved. the graphics here are quite pretty - all the rally locations look gorgeous and have some really nice lighting effects, with michigan being my personal fave. on top of that, variable time of day and weather are back, and their presence is greatly welcomed! it does slightly lack the vibrance of 2, as there seems to be a muted blue tone over everything, but i still appreciate this aesthetic choice and it still looks very nice. however some locations look a little "dead" in comparison to their preceding counterparts, most notably los angeles, but it's not a huge deal.

there's not really much to say in the physics department, because they play very similarly to how they did in dirt 2. jumping from that game to this, you'll feel perfectly at home - but they are a bit more fine-tuned and polished, making for some of the most enjoyable arcade rally physics i've experienced. i also like the ability to toggle assists for the first time in a dirt game, so i can finally have all of them off!

likewise, the sound design is basically on par with the last game. the soundtrack isn't quite as banger-after-banger as dirt 2 but there's a lot of good stuff from artists like danny byrd, everything everything, atmosphere, leftfield, manchester orchestra, 65daysofstatic, and more, bringing an eclectic mix of electronica, alt rock and metal, and hip hop. still wish there was an in-race music option though, at least for rallycross, landrush, and gymkhana. there's also a few "characters" in the form of voiceovers that guide you along and congratulate you for wins, which some people find annoying, but i don't mind. they're a bit generic but kind of wholesome when you get past the "DUDE YOU SHOULD TOTALLY UPLOAD THAT TO YOUTUBE AMIGO!!" and their speech after the final event was actually kind of heartwarming in a weird way.

while i do miss the atmosphere lost in the aforementioned stylistic turnaround towards more traditional rally, i do appreciate what this meant in terms of gameplay structure. the dirt tour in this game, rather than being organized by location, is split into four seasons each with four series that contain a number of events spread across the different disciplines. supplementing this is a series of "world tour" events that take you across each location in each discipline of the game - these include traditional rally, rallycross, and trailblazer returning en force, landrush (in a somewhat diminished capacity compared to 2), head2head (crossover races, returning from the original dirt) and the all new gymkhana mode.

let's talk about gymkhana. many HATED when this mode was introduced, as it "sours" what would've been a more rally-heavy package with the least rally thing the series has seen yet. but those people are lame because it's actually fun as hell. it's essentially a stunt-driving mode that has you stringing together drifts, spins, donuts, jumps, and smashes to rack up points within an arena, and it's shockingly addictive. in addition to standard gymkhana events, there are also numerous "challenges" peppered throughout the career that require you to do things such as earning enough points by drifting, completing certain tricks under a time limit, smashing objects in an area while avoiding penalties, and so on. they're a fun diversion and i appreciate their presence.

still, rally events take slight precedence for most of the dirt tour. there are four locations in the game for both rally and trailblazer - finland, kenya, michigan, and norway (with dlc adding monte carlo for rally only). all of them are highly visually distinct and beautiful to look at, with the stages themselves being quite fun to drive. and snow stages! how i missed thee in the past two dirt games. however, they are all still disappointingly short, with the longest stages taking around 3 minutes at the most. also, damage continues to play a minimal role despite the game attempting to hearken back to the "old days," - there's no need to repair, and i never even took enough damage to light up the damage indicators. also why the FUCK does it reset your setup to default after EVERY RACE??

although the number of locations is similar in number to dirt 2, there are many more stages in each one. the 8 stages per area do tend to re-use sections and just have different start- and endpoints, but any amount of variation here feels like a big step up from before. indeed, even in other modes like rallycross or landrush, the tracks tend to share a common area but with slight alterations to the layout to keep things from being stagnant. a lot of these variations are relatively minor, but it actually works wonders for decreasing the feeling of repetition - i was shocked to find out i spent nearly as much time completing this game as i did dirt 2, as this game feels like it flew by a lot quicker since the races were just that much less monotonous. as a final note, i do somewhat miss the raid discipline, although raid vehicles are still present and there are a couple events that have you using them on normal rally tracks.

speaking of vehicles, the car variety here is also noticeably better, especially with all the dlc included in the complete edition. the rally car class is huge and includes a good swath of iconic cars from different eras dating all the way back to the 70s. the trailblazer class also includes both classic and modern hillclimb cars, and the rallycross and gymkhana selections have a good amount of choice as well. however, even though i'm not the biggest fan of landrush, i do lament the lack of unique vehicles available in this game. there is simply a single unlicensed "stadium truck" and likewise a "stadium buggy" which are actually just re-used models of the toyota truck from dirt 2 and the scott schwalbe buggy from dirt 1.

with this very welcomed variety, it's unfortunate that the way the career mode is designed restricts you from being able to fully enjoy it. progression in this game drops cash and is done entirely via earning rep (experience) from events and ranking up. this is fine, but the problem is the amount of rep you earn is heavily dependent on bonus objectives which award variable rep depending on which team you drive for. instead of being able to simply own cars and pick the livery you like, each car and livery has a certain rep award attached to it depending on what level it was unlocked at. essentially, you are punished for wanting to use a certain car based on personal preference or even pick the color you like because you earn less xp if it's one you unlocked earlier. which sucks. also, a lot of the most iconic liveries are not usable in career because they're the "default" and not tied to one of the common teams that you unlock access to during the career!

the objectives themselves are usually alright but sometimes dumb. you might get "be in the lead at the halfway point" on a crossover race and then start on the side of the track that's definitively longer, or get "finish without taking damage" on a rallycross or landrush race, which are basically impossible to win without bumping at least a tiny bit. fortunately (i guess?), rep caps out at level 30, at which point you can feel free to ignore objectives and pick whatever you like.

i also want to mention the difficulty curve is still a bit off here. non time-based events are generally fine even on the highest difficulty, requiring a good amount of skill to take the win while not being unreasonable, and usually with only a little bit of cheese necessary. but for rally and trailblazer, things are all over the place. its sort of like dirt 2 where the hardest difficulty is too hard and one lower is too easy. i set it to the second highest because it's the safest, least-frustrating bet, but there are still some events where i put in a perfect run and just barely make first, and others where i barely have to try and finish over 10 seconds ahead.

dirt 3 feels like kind of a weird case for me, because on many levels it directly improves upon dirt 2, and yet... something just feels missing. i still like dirt 2 more. for most people i would probably recommend dirt 3 as the highlight of the original dirt trilogy for its superiority in technical aspects such as physics as well as in most parts of the gameplay design. but for me, personally, and for other weirdos maybe, there's just something about the charm and character of the second game that keeps it on top. still, if you're a casual racing fan who wants a good arcade rally game, you can hardly go wrong here.

7.7/10