Burnout Legends Updated Hands-On

One of the first games that we checked out at Electronic Arts' Hot Summer Night event this afternoon was Burnout Legends for the PSP. Currently scheduled for release alongside Burnout Revenge on September 20, Burnout Legends is a Criterion-developed racer that combines all of the best features--including vehicles, tracks, and gameplay modes--from Burnout, Burnout 2, and Burnout 3: Takedown.

During our time with Burnout Legends today we got our first look at the game's pursuit mode, which fans of the series will remember from Burnout 2. In that game, pursuit mode charged you with chasing down and wrecking a target car within a time limit. Your mission is much the same this time around, but to make things more interesting, Criterion has introduced "blocker" cars to the proceedings, whose only goal is to protect the target car and, if necessary, take you out in the process. The demo version of Burnout Legends that we saw today featured an option to play each pursuit game with up to two blockers, and it also had the majority of the game's 50-plus vehicles unlocked for us to choose from.

As we scrolled through the various coupes, sports cars, muscle cars, compacts, and racers on offer, many of them were instantly recognizable from previous Burnout games, including a number that were available only as endgame unlockables. Since we were playing the pursuit mode, we opted for one of the five cop cars that will appear in Burnout Legends--namely the muscle cop car, a sleek black number that wouldn't be recognizable as a law enforcement vehicle if it weren't for the flashing lights on its roof. Some of the other cop cars in Burnout Legends are more conventional, but at the other end of the spectrum there's even an IndyCar/Formula One-style cop racer.

When the pursuit got under way, we noticed that there were two bars in the top left corner of the screen--one of them displaying the amount of damage that our target car had sustained and the other giving us a clear indication of the distance between us and our target. The target car had a large yellow arrow and the word "Target" floating above it at all times, while the blocker vehicles had gray arrows above them. The blocker cars did a decent job of hindering our progress initially, and while it was tempting to become embroiled in battles with them, we quickly realized that they'd reappear just a couple of seconds after we took them out. We were able to inflict plenty of damage on the target car once we started concentrating on it, but we ultimately beat the level with a one-hit takedown rather than by hitting it repeatedly.

Burnout Legends looks every bit as fast and smooth as its console predecessors on the PSP screen, and the game's visuals even hold up pretty well when the game is being run through a development kit on a TV screen. The game's sound is also coming along nicely, and the finished game will feature between 20 and 30 music tracks taken from Burnout Revenge. We'll bring you more information on Burnout Legends as its September release date closes in.