I had my first decent hands-on with the Xbox 360 on the weekend, playing one level of Burnout Revenge and watching my friends play a couple of others.
The system: Pumped out some pretty nice graphics. The explosions and stuff were cool, though the traffic in the game was surprisingly barren. My friend is not running an HDTV, but to my surprise the game still looked noticeably better than anything I've played elsewhere. Almost as good as the HDTV 360 displays I've seen at the mall, so either this is one of the best looking games on the system, or HDTV is overrated. You decide!
The controller: I've heard so much praise for it...it is nice, but I'd put it on about equal footing with the GameCube controller, personally. The button layout works for more types of games, but it's harder to remember which face button you're pushing. I've said it many times before, but the Super Nintendo got it right with the different-shaped face buttons, why doesn't anyone realize that? The triggers also felt a little funny, but it was very comfortable overall. The right analog stick is better than Nintendo's c-stick, as was the case with the old Xbox controller.
The game: What have they done to poor Burnout? Okay, this is still a fun game with a lot of the basic Burnout elements, but compared to Burnout 2 (a.k.a. the one I've played), it just doesn't require the same finesse and skill. You can purposely rear-end traffic going the same way as you, and the boost meter fills so easily you almost never have to wait. Traffic was also surprisingly thin on the tracks I saw, and the crashes felt less realistic. Most notably, when you rear-end someone, they go flying ahead of you without slowing you down at all, killing the sensation of realism that the graphics are trying to provide. Okay, the Burnout series isn't noted for realism, but the physics feel "wrong" even for the Burnout universe. Overall, it's still a fun game that would probably be in my collection if I owned an Xbox 360, but in my brief play session, this game completely failed to capture the intensity that made Burnout 2 a legendary racing game.
The verdict: I had fun, but was it $500 CDN worth of fun? No. Basically the price is too steep, until Microsoft drops it by at least $100, I'll save my money, thanks. Xbox heads who love Project Gotham and First Person shooters probably wouldn't be disappointed, but I still don't think this system's cost is justified by the games or the hardware.
Topic: Quick and Dirty Review: Xbox 360 + Burnout Revenge (Read 3243 times)
