Decent budget action...
Following the release of Burnout 3, the destroy-everything-in-your-path-racing genre is alive and well. Most recently is the release of Crash n’ Burn, an arcade-style racing game by developer Climax. With rather stale level design and gameplay, Crash n’ Burn just can’t compete with anything else in the genre.
Pimp my deathtrap…
You start the game off with two different vehicles—a compact and a pickup truck. Immediately you can delve into the game’s many different customizing options. By entering the Garage you can change the cosmetic details of your vehicles by altering the paint color and a few simple paneling sections such as the hood, rear, and side panels, to name a few. The paint color options are the most detail-oriented out of anything in the garage because you can control the base color, brightness, and contrast of the paint. You can make some interesting color creations if you toy around enough with the options.
The second purchase gallery is the Shop where you can buy new components for your vehicle like panels, vinyl designs, and decals. In addition you can purchase vehicle upgrades: engine, gear, and tires. These will make your car go faster, accelerate quicker, or take turns better, respectively. Purchasing these non-cosmetic upgrades won’t be necessary early on but if you hope for your cars to compete then you’ll have to dole out for them eventually. You can also purchase nitrous upgrades which will, in effect, make your nitro bar last longer.
Aim for car, slam on the gas, pray…
Once you’ve pimped out your vehicles your ready to head to the race track where the main objective is to maim and kill everything in your path and at the same to not blow yourself to high hell. You’ll start every race with 16 cars but usually not everyone will be crossing the finish line. Each race is completed in a certain number of laps; six laps will win races in the beginning and then increase as the game progresses. Towards the later laps you’ll have to deal with the empty car hulks of your fallen AI opponents, oil slicks, ramps, and burning fuel. It all makes for a lovely game of 100 mile per hour dodge ball inside the speeding coffin otherwise known as your car. Your car has a health bar and should that bar reach zero you’ll explode in the middle of the track and your race is over. Win the race and you’ll gain both experience and cash which is used to unlock parts, engine upgrades, and eventually two new vehicles—the muscle and sports car.
The main problem with all these ways to wreck is that at times it just gets to be too much. Ignited oil slicks will burn for the duration of the race and car pileups will consistently get in your way. It makes saving your cars health a nightmare; especially when your vehicle is being held together by a single rivet—as it will be towards the end of the races. There are times in the races where you can’t avoid taking damage, because car parts or fire will be strewn across the entire roadway. It makes racing a little unfair, not to mention frustrating. I think the fire would have been more effective if it did more damage but only lasted for 10-20 seconds on the track.
Haven’t we seen this somewhere before…
Another downside is that there just isn’t a lot to it from a game play perspective. Besides the basic races, Crash n’ Burn has only a few different modes of play. There’s kamikaze which sees two teams of racers go in opposite directions on the track. The result is complete mayhem where you may not even have to win, just stay alive the longest. There’s also the “X” tracks which feature the same layout as the originals but with a few dirt ramps and narrowed lanes. The ramps will serve as launch points that you can try to hit people in to. There are also reversed courses but even with these it all seems like more of the same.
The crash system itself seemed broken as well. You’re rewarded with more nitro whenever you crash a car on the track. The problem here is that your car normally takes a significant amount of punishment dealing damage to other vehicles. Not to mention that the nitro in the game isn’t very effective. It doesn’t really help you go faster; only boost your acceleration rate. There’s no point in charging around the course if your car took 50% damage knocking the front runner out of commission. The rest of the race is probably going to be spent avoiding anything and everything.
The AI doesn’t help the game much either. It basically has two functions: race to finish line, and hit everything that isn’t itself. From the very first second of the race you’ll see the AI cars swerve into each others sides, almost as if they all had giant magnets inside which stuck them together. Very few times will the AI show any semblance of intelligent racing. Watching the cars do the kamikaze races is very entertaining though. It’s best to stay in the back of the pack and let the wave of cars in front of you serve as a giant snow-plow, getting rid of anything in your path.
Odds and ends…
Visually, Crash n’ Burn won’t win any awards for beauty but its graphics are simple and effective. The different paint jobs all make your vehicle unique and stand out. You’ll see cool visual effects also like the paint boiling off when lit on fire.
The different levels suffer from mediocrity though. Whether you’re racing in “Bronx”, “San Francisco”, “Las Vegas”, or any other of the generic-sounding tracks you’ll notice that all the cityscapes look the same. There isn’t really much distinction between them and I think Climax should have put more effort into level design.
The sound, much like the rest of the game is just about average. The various sound effects of the car are nothing special and are your typical tire-screeching, engine-revving, and panel-smashing that you’ve no doubt heard before. The game features a decent soundtrack of various rock songs. The soundtrack actually reminded me of the music in Road Rash 64. It’s relatively bland rock, but it’s still better than the techno-babble that some racing games have.
One thing I really was looking forward to was a split-screen multiplayer but alas it’s not there. You can go on Xbox live however and in addition to racing other players you can view your single-player race times which are uploaded to compare with other racers. Turns out I’m quite the badass at the Las Vegas track since I have the 839th best time ever. Finding a game is easy enough and just like most Live games you can host your own game, quick match it, or be picky through optimatch.
Don’t get me wrong for all its faults, Crash n’ Burn is a lot of fun. It’s smash ‘em up style of gameplay is easy to pick up and even more fun to see in action. However, all of the things in Crash n’ Burn we have seen before and the limited racing modes bog the game down even more. At a $20 price point though, what are you expecting? It may not be revolutionary, but Crash n’ Burn will keep you occupied for a few weekends of fun.