Culture

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3 (2.5/5)

Speed limits mean that cars don't matter. It's harsh, I know, but that's the truth. It doesn't matter if your car is a V13 with big-ol’ fuel injected cutoffs and chrome plated rods (oh yeah), it will stagnate and slowly die, never able to achieve its design goals. Owning a fast car is like keeping a flamingo in a shoe-box. Its healthy pink-glow will fade and its legs will break and deform unless you pump it full of chimeric hormones.
 
That is the strength of Burnout's crash-mode: destroying a love that people are wrong for even appreciating, the sight of brushed panels crumpling and waxed paint flaking like so much cheap-strudel. $13,994. A specific price, a real price, would float off the top of the wrecked car and sum with all the other values.
 
With Burnout CRASH!, the feeling is not recreated. It's a bird's eye view of a street full of generic stylised vehicles. Vague, cheap people movers. Every one seems to be valued in multiples of ten grand. These cars do not have soul. Normally, I value compelling game mechanics over visual fidelity. But in this case, crash mode has a such a specific appeal that it's very hard to get excited about this brand of mindless destruction.
 Really, the mechanics are better. The 2D plane flattens out, quite literally, a great deal of the chaos theory inherent in the subtle construct of the interactive pile up. Carnage can spill into the realm of the pedestrian, passing the footpath and collapsing shopping malls. It is a strategic decision, pursuing that angle and a few four-doors may well slip through.
 
But that just never seemed like the point. The sheer volume of random tries required for one good crash, the capitalism sown into that idea, is what made old Burnout so enjoyable. I don't know, maybe I'm just bitter because I failed my restricted.