Finally, this is the racer I've been looking for.
User Rating: 9.5 | Burnout Revenge PS2
The Good: Lots of gameplay variety to keep things interesting. Great graphics. Lots of tracks and missions to keep you busy. Good multiplayer and options. Good physics and sense of speed. Superb crashes. Point system and unlockables can be addicting. The Bad: Long load/save times if you have autosave on. Review: Well, I finally got an "arcade racer" I've been looking for. I mostly got this game based on the GS review and for the multiplayer aspect. But boy, was I blown away with how good and kind of addicting the single player can be. Besides the beautiful presentation of the game, the things that keep it fun are the point/grading system, and the variety of driving "missions". Obviously, this isn't like a free roam driving mission based game like GTA, it's still a racer. But when playing through the main mode, you are given a series of different types of racing goals. And you can go about completing them at your leisure and in any order. Earning a good score will unlock other tracks, races, and cars to drive. The different races consist of a regular race, where you try to finish first. A "traffic check" race, where you hit as much same-way traffic as possible to extend the clock and earn a good score. A "crashbreaker" race where you try to jam as much traffic as possible and use your crashbreaker to blow up the traffic and earn a high score. There is a takedown race where you try to bump and takedown as many rival cars as you can while still trying to finish first. There's eliminator races, where the car in last place is eliminated every 30 seconds or so, and you try to finish on top. There are burning lap races where you simply race by yourself trying to beat the clock. I think there are a few other types of races, but you get the point, there's a lot of variety here. And for me, each type of race is genuinely very fun. None of them fall short.
The gameplay itself is VERY fun, and has a little complexity to it for a racing game, though it's still easy to learn. In most racing games, you simply try to stay on the main path and get off the road while turning a corner. In this game, besides that, your strategy is heavily based on your "boost", checking same-way traffic and drifting to obtain more boost, avoiding the rival cars, and/or taking them down. So this game involves ALOT of crashing, but the crashes are extremely fun, and there's even strategy involved in crashing, lol. For instance, if a rival car takes you down, you have the option of hitting R1 to go to slow-mo and try to position your car in the middle of the road to block any upcoming rival cars and make them crash too. Later in the game, you also have the option of trying to hit R2 fast enough when another car takes you down, so that your car explodes, causing the other car to explode to. It's called a "revenge takedown" and is where this game it's name from. Anyhow, the crashes themselves are fun to watch, the animation is absolutely amazing on them. But you can skip them of course by hitting the x button. I could go on and on about the rating and point system and unlockables, but I think just the above stuff about the actual gameplay itself will do. In multiplayer, you can play any of the types of races that are available in single player, which is nice. I haven't tried to play online yet, but this game is supposed to be online supported too. :-) Well, I've only played one NFS game and hated, since it only ONE track to play on over and over again. (Underground) and this is the only Burnout game I've played, but it's by far the best console racer I've ever played. I definitely would recommend it for people who are interested in single player, multiplayer, and online play.
