Price: £39.99

Players: 1-2

Burnout. Sounds a bit similar to Wipeout and the principle is similar as you drive, not from A to B, but from A back to A again as the track takes you back to where you first started from for lap after lap of racing for as long as you can stand it with several different cars. For a typical racer there are the typical options - a single race, a multi-race (known as 'Championship' here), a head-to-head for those with more than one joystick to waggle at once, a time-attack for those who like the solo action, a 'Special' section for crash replays and a music player which plays tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1, but why can't it do this in the game??

The game has two main selling points, the first being a sort-of adrenaline meter such that as you drive close to the knuckle through the traffic, so does this meter increase and so your speed will be upped along the way. I didn't notice much difference as it runs like the clappers anyway. The other thing of note is the crashes which some will have seen from the game's previews on TV. However, while this is interesting for a while, it quickly becomes irritating. The crashes don't serve to enthrall, just enrage because they look like tacked-on extras that have no part in the actual gameplay - they only appear as soon as you hit something and go away just as quickly, so you don't get the chance to right your car first, it just reappears in the correct direction but slower because you're having to get yourself going again. Put simply, it just doesn't feel like like a crash in Grand Theft Auto 3 does.

Speed is definitely of the essence here. The graphics are insanely fast, almost like running the gauntlet in a Tron race in terms of the pace, but how many times can you run the same race since too many crashes will stop you from progressing further and you'll have to replay it. Some anti-aliasing wouldn't go amiss though as there are noticeable jaggies throughout. The sound is okay. It's nothing you don't expect from a game like this and the Dolby Surround is an added bonus but isn't made use of as much as it was in Extreme G3 and I still want to know why there's no DD5.1 in-game as opposed to in the 'Special' section only. Overall, it's fun to play for a while but its longevity is severely in doubt. If you must play it, try a rental first.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.