Dangerous Driving
A SPIRITUAL SUCCESSOR TO BURNOUT 3? TAKE OUR MONEY. TAKE IT! JUSTIN TOWELL
PUBLISHER THREE FIELDS ENTERTAINMENT / DEVELOPER THREE FIELDS ENTERTAINMENT / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £24.99/$29.99
trials and three-race championships,
to face-offs with rivals to win their
cars, and even police pursuits. Then
there’s surely everyone’s personal
favourite: ‘Road Rage’, which sees
you trying to take down as many
opponents as you can within a set
time limit. And if you do crash, there’s
even a slow-motion button to allow
for ‘aftertouch takedowns’, where you
guide your own wrecked vehicle into
the path of approaching rivals, filling
your boost bar ready for the restart.
Amazing scenes.
The collision system is mercifully
forgiving when it comes to hitting the
trackside walls, only registering an
actual crash if you collide with the
scenery at a sharp angle, otherwise
letting you scrape along at high speed
with sparks flying from your car. All this
was honed to a fine sheen 15 years
ago, and nothing fundamental has
been changed.
While oncoming traffic flashes
its lights well in advance to alert
you to its presence, it’s less easy
to see where the track itself goesIn case you’ve
missed the rather
awesome news,
Dangerous Driving is
a new Burnout in all
but name, made by
a small team of breakaway Criterion
developers which still believes in
smashing up cars, drifting around
long corners and playing chicken with
oncoming traffic.
From the responsive car handling
to the star ratings that pop up for
good drifts or catching big air, almost
everything’s in place so you can get
straight back into this arcade style of
driving gameplay. And unlike Burnout
Paradise, which recently got an HD
remaster, this isn’t open world. It’s
Burnout 3-era ‘ribbon road’ racing, and
a wonderfully pure experience.
You spend your time weaving
through civilian traffic at ridiculous
speeds, ramming rival racers off the
road and earning boost by – you
guessed it – driving dangerously.
There are eight different event types,
from regular races, ‘Shakedown’ time
next. That’s particularly true when
trackside chevrons warning of tight
corners are pointing the wrong way
from the direction you’re coming from.
But the game wants you to have fun
and focus on aggression rather than
self-preservation, so it’s only a minor
issue. The tiered career structure
starts you off comparatively slowly,
building up to some wonderful early
’90s F1 lookalikes which move like
greased lightning.Victory lap
If you’re a veteran Burnout player,
you’ll breeze through most of the
game, only really being challenged by
the last couple of tiers in the career
mode, and even then only if you’re
trying to score gold medals on each
event. There are platinum medals to
be won, too, which means there is
plenty to do until you’ve aced all the
tiers in the game.
However, it doesn’t quite have the
gloss that permeated the big-budget
Burnout games. Firstly, the crash
damage isn’t as satisfying as it couldshort
cutWHAT IS IT?
A spiritual successor
to the Burnout series
of crash-tactic
racing games.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
A TV car crash
compilation with the
video sped up by a
factor of about 20.
WHO’S IT FOR?
Anyone who thinks
modern racing
games are dull and
longs for old-school
arcade racing fun.082 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE