Burnout Legends
Legendary? Nope. Burnout? Oh hell yes.
Published: September 27, 2005
You could almost hear an audible gasp all over the country when EA announced that they were indeed working on a PSP Burnout game, and little squeals of glee when we found out that it was something of a greatest hits collection to boot.
Now, finally, Burnout Legends has arrived, and for the most part, it's everything you'd expect from three amazing games rolled into one, but the transition to the PSP isn't without a few hitches here and there.
By and large, Legends plays like Burnout 3, borrowing most of the elements like takedowns and the Aftertouch and Impact Time additions that allow you to slow time after a crash and steer your mangled wreck into other racers to make them crash. In fact, most of the game screams port, right down to the shoddy camera used while trying to Aftertouch into other cars.
This extends to most of the gameplay modes like Elimination (where each round the last racer is cut from the pack), Burning Lap (where you have to make a perfect constant-turbo lap around a course without crashing), and Road Rage (where you takedown out as many rival cars as possible within a time limit). Burnout 2's Pursuit Mode, which lets you chase down and wreck a single rival car, mixes in a bit of B3's takedowns to keep it in line with the rest of the game.
If Legends is a PSP version of Burnout 3, the tracks from the other two games make it feel almost like DVD-style bonus. Nearly everything from the other games is brought over perfectly, albeit slightly upgraded to match the visuals. This means it's actually possible to see how things like course design and length have been tweaked to match up with the gameplay as the series has evolved - if you played the first two games enough to remember the courses.
Even still, it's amazing to see how many right angles and sharp corners there were in the first Burnout tracks, and how they were slowly shaved off as the series moved towards more urban, curvy environments in the second game. Most, if not all of the Burnout 3 tracks make the transition perfectly, and it's more than impressive that the courses could be ported so perfectly to the PSP.
But all is not perfect. Crash Mode, one of the best additions to the formula, has consistently gotten better and more visceral on consoles as the series has gone on. There's a sick sort of satisfaction that you get when you can cause massive pileups and see things exploding and flying everywhere, but the reduced hardware power of the PSP makes seeing these huge pileups more or less impossible.
As a result, the crashes just don't have the same kind of punch. Sure, Criterion took the time to upgrade the older courses with things like trucks that could lose their payload, but save for a few rare (and completely awesome) crash situations, I never really got that rush I get when I see cars slamming into each other at high speed.
Part of this might come from the fact that there just isn't a sense of high speed most of the time. Sure, cars can still go fast. In fact, they can go quite fast, but unlike something like WipEout Pure where the game gives a good sensation of speed, something about Legends is just... off.
It could also stem from the controls, which are responsive enough, but never really deliver a feeling that you can avoid any accident if you're just quick enough. The analog nub's extensive dead zone means you have to use it more or less digitally, pushing all the way out to the sides in taps rather than graceful, gradual motions. For this reason, it's really much easier and safer to use the d-pad, which is a shame.
Now, finally, Burnout Legends has arrived, and for the most part, it's everything you'd expect from three amazing games rolled into one, but the transition to the PSP isn't without a few hitches here and there.
By and large, Legends plays like Burnout 3, borrowing most of the elements like takedowns and the Aftertouch and Impact Time additions that allow you to slow time after a crash and steer your mangled wreck into other racers to make them crash. In fact, most of the game screams port, right down to the shoddy camera used while trying to Aftertouch into other cars.
This extends to most of the gameplay modes like Elimination (where each round the last racer is cut from the pack), Burning Lap (where you have to make a perfect constant-turbo lap around a course without crashing), and Road Rage (where you takedown out as many rival cars as possible within a time limit). Burnout 2's Pursuit Mode, which lets you chase down and wreck a single rival car, mixes in a bit of B3's takedowns to keep it in line with the rest of the game.
If Legends is a PSP version of Burnout 3, the tracks from the other two games make it feel almost like DVD-style bonus. Nearly everything from the other games is brought over perfectly, albeit slightly upgraded to match the visuals. This means it's actually possible to see how things like course design and length have been tweaked to match up with the gameplay as the series has evolved - if you played the first two games enough to remember the courses.
Even still, it's amazing to see how many right angles and sharp corners there were in the first Burnout tracks, and how they were slowly shaved off as the series moved towards more urban, curvy environments in the second game. Most, if not all of the Burnout 3 tracks make the transition perfectly, and it's more than impressive that the courses could be ported so perfectly to the PSP.
But all is not perfect. Crash Mode, one of the best additions to the formula, has consistently gotten better and more visceral on consoles as the series has gone on. There's a sick sort of satisfaction that you get when you can cause massive pileups and see things exploding and flying everywhere, but the reduced hardware power of the PSP makes seeing these huge pileups more or less impossible.
As a result, the crashes just don't have the same kind of punch. Sure, Criterion took the time to upgrade the older courses with things like trucks that could lose their payload, but save for a few rare (and completely awesome) crash situations, I never really got that rush I get when I see cars slamming into each other at high speed.
Part of this might come from the fact that there just isn't a sense of high speed most of the time. Sure, cars can still go fast. In fact, they can go quite fast, but unlike something like WipEout Pure where the game gives a good sensation of speed, something about Legends is just... off.
It could also stem from the controls, which are responsive enough, but never really deliver a feeling that you can avoid any accident if you're just quick enough. The analog nub's extensive dead zone means you have to use it more or less digitally, pushing all the way out to the sides in taps rather than graceful, gradual motions. For this reason, it's really much easier and safer to use the d-pad, which is a shame.
