Burnout is a racing series, and its legacy is nothing short of excellent, having reshaped other racing franchises after it (such as Need for Speed, of which Criterion now works on).
The original Burnout, released in 2001, however? It's relatively harmless.
It's clear when you enter into this title that Criterion had yet to find that secret ingredient nor are they in their element. It almost barely feels like a Burnout game in contrast with later titles like 3 or Revenge. Crash modes, a Burnout staple, are also lacking in this title.
So what does the original Burnout bring to the table? A fair bit. Having been built off of arcade racer roots, the majority of Burnout's gameplay is relatively standard for the time. Think along the lines of Daytona USA, or alternatively, San Francisco Rush. The main distinguishing feature, as tame as it appears in this title, are the crashes. There’s a pretty decent emphasis put on them as well. But when comparing to the later games, of which contain far more detailed damage physics and additional gameplay mechanics surrounding them, the crashes in this game feel like a paltry little addition to the racing formula. Despite this, it was the main selling point back in 2001.
Here, it would be hard to not call it a gimmick that breaks the flow of gameplay. You will also be frequently crashing a lot, as the crash "detection" is super oversensitive in this title and will often wreck you from a light tap against a vehicle or adjacent wall. Later Burnout titles refine the concept by adding features like aftertouch, impact time and crashbreakers, but all you can do in this title is watch your crash get replayed from different angles while your opponents fly past after you (more than likely) accidentally slightly scrape another car on the road. A symptom of having to sell 2001 technology.
Boosting is another feature that distinguishes Burnout from the rest. You are given a meter which can be filled by driving in oncoming, drifting, and near-missing traffic, fills a bit too slow for what it is worth and can be very easily taken away by a single crash. You can only start to use boost once the meter is full. As a result, you barely get to use the boost - I tended to get a 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 a good chunk. It sucks because getting a full boost is when this game's driving really gets fun. Evidently, the later burnout games realized this and not only allowed & encouraged far more frequent usage of boost, resulting in altogether more fun gameplay, but it also refined the boosting mechanics in general. Good job on you. Criterion!
There is another mechanic at play with the boost here, however. This mechanic, from what I can gather, is only present in this game. If you burn through the whole meter without letting off the boost button, you receive a "Burnout" bonus which by default restores the boost bar to about half. If you do so and also stay in oncoming traffic, near-missing cars the ENTIRE time, it will actually fully restore your boost, meaning you can keep going and chain these burnout boosts together. It’s neat in concept but also goads the player into making dumb decisions, since the maps are designed in such a way there it’s quite hard to use a full boost bar nonstop without crashing, and even fewer while staying in oncoming. And knowing that doesn't stop you from trying because you’ve already determined that “boost = fun = dopamine” and it ends up leading to heartbreak when you crash and now have no boost at all!
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 you've 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.
Aside from that, you've got standard arcade racer fare – a few tracks, a small selection of cars graded by their "difficulty" to drive – and there's even a constant countdown timer in races which is extended by checkpoints! There 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. Retrying in championship mode even works on a credits-based system to fully hone in on the arcade racer inspiration. You’d swear that this game was initially an arcade game converted to consoles.
As a result, the game is very barebones in terms of content. You start out with 5 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", depending on if you’re lucky enough to not even scrape other cars with your sheer size.
Rubberbanding is extremely blatant. Later games would allow you to make a gap against your opponents, and the game will happily 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. It’s almost Mario Kart 64 levels of rubberbanding. You have to hope that you're lucky enough that the AI opponents bother to crash into your wreckage. This rubberband will snap, however, should the opponent get too far away from you. The AI programming is actually kinda neat in that they’ll also make mistakes and crash into traffic to help equalize and make races more fair. The problem is the traffic will only ever really spawn in the player’s general vicinity, because why waste processing power calculating the paths of cars that the player can't even see? What this means is that once the opponent is too far away for traffic to spawn, they can just speed off without worrying about crashing and will get farther and farther away with no hope of catching up.
There’s also 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 likely ever heard in a video game. It wasn't bad or annoying at any point, but it also made basically zero impression.
I'm grateful to the original Burnout for setting the foundation for the series that would eventually produce some of the greatest racing games ever made. But unless you’re really interested in the series’ origins, there is no real reason to play this nowadays. maybe if you just want to experience the tracks and how boosting works... but aside from that there's basically nothing here that isn't massively improved upon by the sequels. Not even that usual weird quaint early-series charm most franchises have in their early years. 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.
Having understood how the game’s publisher, Acclaim, was suffering in these years prior to their bankruptcy in 2004 brings you to one single conclusion: thank the heavens Acclaim was not only desperate enough to publish this, but also ask for a sequel to the game.
The original Burnout, released in 2001, however? It's relatively harmless.
It's clear when you enter into this title that Criterion had yet to find that secret ingredient nor are they in their element. It almost barely feels like a Burnout game in contrast with later titles like 3 or Revenge. Crash modes, a Burnout staple, are also lacking in this title.
So what does the original Burnout bring to the table? A fair bit. Having been built off of arcade racer roots, the majority of Burnout's gameplay is relatively standard for the time. Think along the lines of Daytona USA, or alternatively, San Francisco Rush. The main distinguishing feature, as tame as it appears in this title, are the crashes. There’s a pretty decent emphasis put on them as well. But when comparing to the later games, of which contain far more detailed damage physics and additional gameplay mechanics surrounding them, the crashes in this game feel like a paltry little addition to the racing formula. Despite this, it was the main selling point back in 2001.
Here, it would be hard to not call it a gimmick that breaks the flow of gameplay. You will also be frequently crashing a lot, as the crash "detection" is super oversensitive in this title and will often wreck you from a light tap against a vehicle or adjacent wall. Later Burnout titles refine the concept by adding features like aftertouch, impact time and crashbreakers, but all you can do in this title is watch your crash get replayed from different angles while your opponents fly past after you (more than likely) accidentally slightly scrape another car on the road. A symptom of having to sell 2001 technology.
Boosting is another feature that distinguishes Burnout from the rest. You are given a meter which can be filled by driving in oncoming, drifting, and near-missing traffic, fills a bit too slow for what it is worth and can be very easily taken away by a single crash. You can only start to use boost once the meter is full. As a result, you barely get to use the boost - I tended to get a 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 a good chunk. It sucks because getting a full boost is when this game's driving really gets fun. Evidently, the later burnout games realized this and not only allowed & encouraged far more frequent usage of boost, resulting in altogether more fun gameplay, but it also refined the boosting mechanics in general. Good job on you. Criterion!
There is another mechanic at play with the boost here, however. This mechanic, from what I can gather, is only present in this game. If you burn through the whole meter without letting off the boost button, you receive a "Burnout" bonus which by default restores the boost bar to about half. If you do so and also stay in oncoming traffic, near-missing cars the ENTIRE time, it will actually fully restore your boost, meaning you can keep going and chain these burnout boosts together. It’s neat in concept but also goads the player into making dumb decisions, since the maps are designed in such a way there it’s quite hard to use a full boost bar nonstop without crashing, and even fewer while staying in oncoming. And knowing that doesn't stop you from trying because you’ve already determined that “boost = fun = dopamine” and it ends up leading to heartbreak when you crash and now have no boost at all!
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 you've 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.
Aside from that, you've got standard arcade racer fare – a few tracks, a small selection of cars graded by their "difficulty" to drive – and there's even a constant countdown timer in races which is extended by checkpoints! There 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. Retrying in championship mode even works on a credits-based system to fully hone in on the arcade racer inspiration. You’d swear that this game was initially an arcade game converted to consoles.
As a result, the game is very barebones in terms of content. You start out with 5 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", depending on if you’re lucky enough to not even scrape other cars with your sheer size.
Rubberbanding is extremely blatant. Later games would allow you to make a gap against your opponents, and the game will happily 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. It’s almost Mario Kart 64 levels of rubberbanding. You have to hope that you're lucky enough that the AI opponents bother to crash into your wreckage. This rubberband will snap, however, should the opponent get too far away from you. The AI programming is actually kinda neat in that they’ll also make mistakes and crash into traffic to help equalize and make races more fair. The problem is the traffic will only ever really spawn in the player’s general vicinity, because why waste processing power calculating the paths of cars that the player can't even see? What this means is that once the opponent is too far away for traffic to spawn, they can just speed off without worrying about crashing and will get farther and farther away with no hope of catching up.
There’s also 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 likely ever heard in a video game. It wasn't bad or annoying at any point, but it also made basically zero impression.
I'm grateful to the original Burnout for setting the foundation for the series that would eventually produce some of the greatest racing games ever made. But unless you’re really interested in the series’ origins, there is no real reason to play this nowadays. maybe if you just want to experience the tracks and how boosting works... but aside from that there's basically nothing here that isn't massively improved upon by the sequels. Not even that usual weird quaint early-series charm most franchises have in their early years. 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.
Having understood how the game’s publisher, Acclaim, was suffering in these years prior to their bankruptcy in 2004 brings you to one single conclusion: thank the heavens Acclaim was not only desperate enough to publish this, but also ask for a sequel to the game.