It’s a hard game for me to think about critically because simply typing out the name of the game puts a smile on my face. Has there ever been a more evocative subtitle in games? The series’ latest feature was so groundbreaking that they put it in the game’s title.
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But the thing that transformed the series from a sleeper hit to a masterpiece, the last ingredient missing from the formula, was violence.īurnout 3: Takedown was the moment where Criterion’s name began to ring bells. This addition drew a lot of praise, and the game as a whole reviewed very well.
This is where the Crash mode made its debut, an ingenious remix of the core game that recontextualized driving as a means to solving puzzles. Burnout 2: Point of Impact is where things started getting weird. Its three game modes (Championship, Race, Time Attack) more or less boil down to “drive faster than the AI in this race/series of races and you’ll win”. The first Burnout was a fairly traditional racing game. As a relative latecomer to these games, it’s fascinating to see where the series started and where it ended up. The series began life under the stewardship of Acclaim Entertainment, who published the first two Burnout games. But that’s the thing about Burnout games: at their best, their greatness feels unstoppable.Ĭriterion found Burnout’s best self in increments. (Although, we should probably be thankful that someone took loot boxes so far that publishers will have to rethink how they extract extra money out of consumers.) It wasn’t out of the question that EA could’ve screwed this up in some inexplicable way. In the past year, EA has managed to kill Mass Effect and fuck up a Star Wars game so badly that the fandom’s nascent rage actually felt warranted for once. The announcement also came with some trepidation.
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Games at Burnout’s level are rarer nowadays, which explains why it was so exciting when EA finally re-released Burnout Paradise, the last full game in the series.
It is also hard to imagine the modern version of the company giving a smaller developer like Criterion to take this many swings at a concept unless it was related to a larger licensed IP. In hindsight, it was an omen of what was to come for EA as a company, as they’ve focused most of their development energy on anger-inducing potential blockbusters and not much else. Burnout’s lack of marketability was confusing at the time and still is now: I don’t get how a game that revolves around fast cars smashing into each other is a difficult sell, but EA found a way. Electronic Arts’ driving game priorities consistently lay elsewhere, specifically with the Need for Speed franchise, the reasoning being that its sales peaks were higher, with the licensed cars apparently holding enough appeal to continually seduce new customers.
"Criterion's open-world opus is a masterpiece in search of a legacy."Įven in its heyday, there was always an element of Burnout’s success that felt downright rebellious, like it was happening despite the desires of the powers that be. Burnout Paradise Remastered (PlayStation 4) review
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