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Car crashing goodness in the palm of your hand!
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Sat, 3 December 2005
by: Special K
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Crashing cars. Always something I have excelled at with video games. Earliest memories extend back to Test Drive and the dreaded crack in the windscreen in all it's CGA 4-colour glory. (sigh) I digress. I have been playing Burnout Legends on the PSP for a fair few weeks now and I'm loving it. From a glimpse of the game on the X-Box, it caught my attention as an ideal title for the PSP.
In order to give you a half-decent run-down on the game, I had to play it for some time to do it justice. I was determined to finish a decent percentage of the game. After 17.5 hours, I have completed 62% of the game and scored 389,990 Burnout points. This is a handy little statistic when viewing your profile on the MemoryStick. I have also unlocked the Sport class but I hardly consider myself to be hardcore. I'm sure any number of people can do better than that!
First things first, let's get into crashing! This is definitely where the appeal and unique aspects of the game lie. As the wild physics of the crash itself seem to be the major focus, there is not a great deal of variation in the cars you can drive. I suppose this is hardly something to worry about though. One word of warning, there are a LOT of loading screens. Each level takes quite some time to load and this can become annoying as you champ at the bit to get into the game.
With each level you are introduced via a flyover that shows you the layout of the course, highlighting where all the "crash pickups" and obstacles are. Don't be fooled by this. Just because there is an instant boost sitting in front of a ramp with crash dollars on it doesn't necessarily mean you should go for it. I found that more often than not there are other ways of maximising carnage! This is what makes the crashing fun – the number of different ways you can crash your car and win those gold medals.
Control options as with most games are configurable, but I went with the defaults and opted for the keypad over the analogue stick. The analogue controls seem a little unresponsive and you feel like you are wrenching the stick off trying to negotiate the course. It seems to be the way with the PSP analogue stick that it is a little sluggish in a number of different games. I often found my hand drifting back to the digital pad just through force of habit which often made for some very average racing.
The game builds up slowly with the first few crashes being fairly easy and gradual increases in difficulty. For the most part I have been playing the "World Tour" event that allows you to progressively unlock the crash events. To the best of my knowledge there are 100 crashes to take part in at varying places around the globe. I was a little pissed to find out that you could not race amongst the red dirt in central Australia or anywhere in Australia for that matter! As a matter of fact you can barely even SEE Australia on the map. It's obscured by menu options down the bottom right hand side of the screen. I guess we should be used to being completely ignored and generally screwed over when it comes to system and game releases…ie. Xbox 360 and GTA Liberty City Stories! Enough of my rant on with the game.
Throughout the World Tour they throw in a crash or two to test your skills (and often patience) with cars that are difficult to dodge on the way to your goal or crash targets that are quite some distance away. The aim of each crash is to cause the maximum dollars worth of damage possible. You are awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in accordance with the amount of damage you cause. Overall it's often fun to sit and watch 20 – 30 cars crash into each other during the replay. I have obtained 75 gold medals so far but I imagine the last 25 are going to be a bit of a challenge. The overall verdict with the crash component of the game is big thumbs up!
I have not really played much of the single player game at all as I was more keen to make use of the Game Sharing feature. Sammy and myself sat down and decided to put the PSP wireless to the test. It would seem that of the release tittles, this is one of the few to exploit the feature. It really is quite cool and seamless. Here is a step by step rundown on the process:
1. Player 1 with the UMD goes into the Game Sharing option in the Game and then selects the game options they want for the multi-player game.
2. The other player switches to the PSP main menu and selects the Game menu and switches to the Game Sharing option. (At this point the "Ad-Hoc" wireless kicks in.)
3. Both users wait while the game information is transferred wirelessly from one console to the other. (This was a reasonably long wait). Once the game finishes downloading it starts.
4. Bingo you're running wirelessly!
Admittedly there were only two of us playing but there was no lag with the wireless connection. As for the distance aspect, we were sitting next to each other so we aren't breaking any records there! It just makes you want to max out the multiplayer component and race against 5 other opponents!
Next we'll move on to the racing element of the game…or in my opinion Burnout Irony – the game that prides itself on having to crash into cars, requires you to be a faultless racing car driver! The World Tour component of the game requires you to complete the game in a number of classes. There are five classes in all – Compact, Muscle, Coupe, Sport and Super. I'm currently floundering away in the Sport class which seems to be the point where Burnout Irony shines through. There are a series of race types to complete: Road Rage – which is my favourite as it concentrates on the Takedown which involves lots of collisions and crashes. Pursuit comes in second where you must take down a car within a certain timeframe to win a medal. Race which is self-explanatory. Face-Off where you compete against one other driver to win their car. Burning Lap which is a single lap where you must beat certain times to win medals. Grand Prix which is essentially a harder version Race and Eliminator where you must avoid finishing last on a lap as the last place driver is eliminated at the end of each lap. While there are a number of different racing options, it doesn't take long for the Burnout Irony events to show up. At the Sport level of difficulty, one crash and your event is over as your rivals seemingly turn on the hyperdrive and kick your arse! This to me is the one blemish on an otherwise fantastic title.
One of the underrated features is to customise the in-game music tracks. I have to say they've gone for the "punk" theme but it wavers dangerously into cock-rock territory. There is one track imparticular that was really, really bad. Billy Talent is the artists name and his woeful track Red Flag. Billy No Talent is more like it and if that isn't his real name then he should be sued for false advertising. Thankfully you can select whether the song is played in the game or just the menus or in this case not at all. One of the few acts I recognised was Pennywise and there are a couple of decent tracks amongst the shite. Needless to say I'm not a big fan of the whole new-wave of so-called "punk" bands. (Note that for once I bagged something other than a techno soundtrack!).
Being super-critical of this game, there are quite a few graphic bugs, predominantly jittering road textures almost reminiscent of the original PlayStation and its dodgy 3D rendering. The graphics don't look like they have been anti-aliased like Ridge Racer or Wipeout Pure, but show a tremendous amount of detail for a PSP title. To the point where I have heard that there are a fair few similarities graphics-wise with the Xbox version.
All up I'm not sure of the replay value of the game. Once you've crashed, scored a gold medal, there's not a lot to compel you to play some more. The racing is a little tacked on and I would suggest Ridge Racer if it's ridiculous drifting and arcade racing you're after. My favourite game modes are definitely the World Tour crash events, Road Rage racing and Pursuit Racing. The other modes turn it into yet another racing game whereas races with takedowns still involve a fair amount of crashing. A worthy addition to you PSP game collection.
by: Special K
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More articles by Special K
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