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Platform Filters:   All Platforms  Xbox   GameCube   PlayStation 2   PC   Game Boy Advance   Site Sections:   Updates  News   Games   Publishers   Developers   Reviews   Previews   Release Dates   Editorials   Glossary   Contact Us		Review:       20th October 2002: Burnout 2: Point of Impact  If you thought the original game was good, you're going to be blown away by the sequel! Posted by Marc Hull - PlayStation 2 - UK and Europe The original Burnout brought the arcade racing genre back into the limelight during a time when many developers were trying to produce racing simulations like GT3. Rather than precision racing around a track, it offered players the chance to speed around cities populated with other traffic, and even encouraged them to weave between other cars and face oncoming vehicles. However, it had it's fair share of faults, including the dreaded PS2 'jaggies' and an incredibly high difficulty level, which prevented it from being a perfect title. A year on, though, and Burnout 2 seems set to right the wrongs of the original, and offer much, much more... Quite possibly the most notable upgrade in Burnout 2 is in the presentation and the graphics; right from the start, you'll notice that the cars are smoother, the tracks are more detailed and the menu screens are slicker than ever. Every vehicle in the game has been improved, with the playable cars now sporting 'semi-realistic' reflection effects and the other traffic containing more polygons and crisper textures. The tracks are also looking equally superb, with bright textures, loads of track-side objects and multiple weather or time-of-day effects. Finally, there are the menu screens, which are more akin to those found in GT3 than the original game, with moving backgrounds which usually show a replay of your last race. However, the biggest graphical improvement has to be in the crashes, which are now looking much more spectacular than before. Now bonnets crumple, glass shatters, wheels fly off into the distance and debris somersaults all over the place, making it all look incredibly realistic; barring a few extremities, all the objects have great simulated physics, making them move just as you'd expect them to. Unlike the original game, where crash sequences became quite tedious after a while, the ones in Burnout 2 look so good that you won't mind giving up vital seconds of race time to watch them! However, if you really want to see the crash system in all its glory, the developers have helpfully included a new crash gameplay mode, where you get one opportunity to create the largest, most expensive crash possible across fifteen different areas. In this mode the whole game goes into slow motion as soon as you hit the first car, with the camera swinging around Matrix-style to give you the best view of the action - it's tremendous! One of the original's biggest problems was its difficulty level, since not only was it incredibly easy to crash during a race and go from first to last position in a matter of seconds, but also because the championships were very long and couldn't be saved between races. Fortunately, this is another area that Burnout 2 has addressed, and now not only are crashes a lot less frequent, but also you can quit out in the middle of a championship then come back later on and resume where you left off. The track designs this time are much better than before, with fewer crossroads so you hardly ever get a situation where you can't prevent a crash, and the collision detection also seems more forgiving now, so that your car will simply scrape past if you hit another car at a shallow angle. Some may still complain about the length of the tracks, since on some each lap takes over three minutes to be completed, but at least the number of laps now is varied to reflect this, and even though the later championships have five or six races in a row, you can at least have a break between each one now. Sound was one of the original's weaker areas, but once again this is something that the sequel seems to have corrected. There are a wide range of music tracks to accompany the on-screen action, and they're all fairly fast-paced and suit the game well. The best bit, however, is the way that the background music is muted while you race, so you mostly hear just the beat and a minor bit of acoustics, until you hit the boost button when it shoots into the foreground and drowns out the sound effects, providing a great combination of speed and loud fast-paced music! For the sound effects, most of the time they consist of fairly generic snippets of revving cars, but once you crash you'll hear every little crunch as metal flexes and glass fragments! Length wasn't a problem in the first game because it was so difficult, but with the learning curve now a lot more smoother the developers have slipped in a new medal system that determines which new modes you unlock after each race. For each event in the game you're given either a gold, silver or bronze medal depending on how well you completed it, and the better the medals you get, the more extra goodies you'll unlock later on. For instance, in the main game mode you can unlock the next championship by just getting a bronze on the current one, but to unlock the next face-off, where you get to win a car, you'll need to get golds on all the races. The basic statistics for the game are also pretty impressive, with seven initially-selectable cars and loads of secret ones to discover, as well as twelve unique tracks, with many variations between them. Since all of the game's courses take place on the same map, sometimes you'll get races that aren't loops but instead simply runs to the end, where the route is a mixture of bits from the other tracks. As you'd expect if you've played the original, Burnout 2's gameplay is incredible. The game's much more fun now that crashes are less frequent, and the boost bar fills up much more quickly now making boosts a regular occurrence rather than a rare bonus. However, the developers have also introduced a couple of new modes that you can play if you're stuck in one of the championships, and these really help correct the linearity of the first title. As well as the aforementioned crash mode, where you have to create the most expensive crash in one go, there's also a new pursuit mode where you take on the role of a police car and have to chase down a villain. In this mode, not only do you have to race quickly to keep up while dodging other traffic, but you also have to ram your opponent to decrease his health before the end of the course! There's also a driving school, that teaches newcomers how to race Burnout-style, as well as a good multiplayer mode and unlockable cheats to add to the game once you've completed the main modes. Overall, Burnout 2 is an absolutely incredible game that has improved on its predecessor in pretty much every area. With incredible graphics, great sound, buckets of game modes to be completed and that great Burnout gameplay, there's little to find fault with this game! Even the European conversion, which is usually the downfall of many games here, has been given due care and attention, with the PAL code sporting both a 60hz mode and a screen adjust! To cut a long story short - get this game, even if you've never liked racing games - no-one can afford to miss this! Marc Hull             Latest Images:		Review Scores:    Graphics:   Sound:   Gameplay:   Length:   Overall: Click here for our Review Score Guidelines.  Review Summary:  With super-smooth, highly detailed graphics, great background music that blends into the action, loads of cars and tracks and some major gameplay improvements, Burnout 2 is not only better than the original, it's one of the best games the PS2 has seen yet!  Related Games:  Burnout 2: Point of Impact for PlayStation 2  20  Screenshots  1  Review  1  Preview Click here for All Game Information.
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