POSTED 22/9/11


BURNOUT CRASH!

Criterion/EA
PS3/PSN (also on Xbox 360/XBLA/Kinect)

Boing, boom SMASH! Bang, boom STACK! Klang, shoom FRACK! Oh, pardon us – just practicing being Kraftwerk.

So, we are the operator of our PSN smashinator, aka Burnout Crash!. Dickens may have had Great Expectations, but they were piffling compared to ours for this. After all, it’s from Criterion, creators of 10/10 cargasm masterpieces Burnout Paradise and Burnout Takedown.
 
Realistically BC! didn’t have a prayer of living up to our expectations – and it didn’t. The first hour had us livid at its shit-sandwichness. Numerous hours later, we grew accustomed to its face, but we were hardly phoning Interflora.

So, we exhumed Takedown to revisit crash mode and check whether we’d mixed our prescription specs with our rose-colouredies. We had; herbing towards kablooeynation was ace, but then it went kinda meh.

BC! basically purloins that meh-tainted crash mode, smushes it into Super Sprint-styled topdownedness and jams it inside a pinnie. You begin mono-vehicularly with one playable level. Earn stars by achieving score targets and six locations, each with three crash junctions and three varying goals to get pointy with, gradually unlock. Hit something wheeled and carnage commences. When your multiplier fills, go boom now to take out as much surrounding stuff as possible, all in the name of cash... and celestial thingies, natch.

It sounds funnerer than it actually is. Sure, strategists’ll get their jollies, but when detonating cars, buildings and anything else mindless enough to get onscreen, surely the keyword should be ‘fun’? Instead it’s usually ‘grind’, and this ain’t no flipping skateboard game.

If only presentation mattered, BC! would out 11 Spinal Tap. From the Autolog to the plethora of deftly-utilised licensed music, it’s slicker than a Slip ’n Slide doused in baby oil. But ultimately, ‘showtime’ in Burnout Paradise is acer.

BP’s essential; BC! feels kinda prehistoric…

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