Even with limitations, a great Burnout
The basic concept of winning a race (or other competitive events with cars) while driving as recklessly as possible is still the same, but in Dominator, it's the most refined. The problem (if one can call it that) in Burnouts 3 and 4 was that the titular burnout wasn't really an important part of the gameplay anymore. 3 further introduced the option to use boost whenever you liked, lessening the neccessity to drive into oncoming traffic, drift or jump to gain that boost. By making it always available, shorter boosts were encouraged which took a bit of the speed rush away. Revenge then introduced the idea of traffic checking which meant that there was now a too-easy way to gain boost. You could considerably drive an entire race in highspeed, but without taking bigger risks.
Dominator eliminates that latter element, meaning that if you hit traffic, you once again crash, and therefore, you need to fill your boost meter by riskier (and hence more exciting) means. And while you can still boost anytime, you are encouraged to wait until you're supercharged so that you can chain burnouts together which is, in many events, the only way to win. And what's more, doing that is the single greatest bit of ecstatic fun there ever was in the series, specifically the new Maniac mode which is precisely about that: Run the entire race in overdrive and perform ever more daring maneuvers to get another burnout and another one and another one.... The perfect balance of all the gameplay elements has finally been reached in the series.
On the downside, since Criterion's actual big project, Burnout Paradise, is on the way, Dominator isn't really a full title. It feels like you could just do a lot more in the previous two titles, aside from the fact that there's no Crash mode, which is a shame, because that has always been a nice diversion every now and then. Truth be told, however, the new racing system is so much fun, you simply forget that you don't have that anymore. And if the refined Burnout system is kept around for Paradise (where the Crash mode apparently will in fact return), then we can look forward to a knockout Burnout on the PS3 soon. Dominator will have to be thanked for that.