Burnout Dominator Comments by Dave McCarthy

oooooooooh!

Still not getting my PSP out for this though. I may have to re-visit the homebrew thread to get my interest up again! :O

Hmm... bit tired of Burnout now to be honest. Burnout 2 is still the best of the series in my opinion.

^^^Agreed.

Been downhill ever since.

Yip Burnout 2 easily the best, but judging by the review the series may be heading back to its roots. Not enough to dust off the PSP I agree, but hopefully iy bodes well for Burnout 5 on PS3/360.

^ +1

Hmm... bit tired of Burnout now to be honest. Burnout 2 is still the best of the series in my opinion.

This sounds like a return to the Bunout 2 style of gameplay - so isn't it worth a try before dismissing it?

I've enjoyed each successive game more than the previous. Yes, that's right. I prefer Burnout Revenge to Burnout 1, 2 or 3.

Woo-hoo! for having an unpopular opinion.

My play of Legends has been almost entirely focussed on getting Gold on all the crash junctions, I've barely done any races at all. Quite strange for a racer. Maybe this will force me into actually racing.

It should also be noted that the AI is absolutely pathetic. It pre-determines the placings of your AI rivals and uses the worst elastic AI ive seen in ages.

You can literally race a whole race without pressing the turbo button and still be second with first place in view. Then, unsurprisingly, the minute you press turbo, all the AI cars press it and you more or less maintain the same distance between you, the only difference is you are more likely to crash. At times the AI actively makes you not turbo for the first few laps as it makes virtually no difference to your race standings and simply makes a head on collision more probable.

You never feel like you have genuinely won a race or thrashed the other cars, only that the AI have decided to let you win one.

@frod

Ridge Racer???

On some of the Ridge Racer series you end up so far ahead in first place that it gets kinda lonely!

;)

Can the technical wizards at EG please find a way of grabbing real screenshots from a game instead of relying on crappy fake PR shots. Is "only adequate" really that bad, or does the reviewer just have unrealistic expectations? I've got no idea about how good this game looks, or how well it compares to Legends even.

Im well aware of rubber band AI, but this is just appalling. Like I said, if you dont turbo, non of the other cars do until you do, which, on a tricky course just makes you pootle round, trying not to crash until the last few corners, when you unleash your boost in a final gambit.

Which obviously not the way the game was intended to be played.

Im not saying I can invent a paradigm shifting reimagination of Arcade Racing AI. Im just saying that, in this game, its shit. With a captial S.

"why on earth do people expect something different."

Because it's lazy and unfair? Most racing games have rubberbanding to some extent but I always felt like the game was cheating in Burnouts implementation, you can spend the whole race in 1st place without crashing and be beaten on the line by a car out of nowhere. They even took split times out because they became irrelevant due to the constant AI cheating.

Thats not racing in my opinion.

Indeed, death to cheating, lazy elastic AI. The worst offenders I've encountered were on the Midnight Club and NFSU games. Truly annoying when you end up racing 10 seconds better than any previous attempt, and get beaten on the line as described.

So they removed the crash events completely?
Would have made more sense just to put them in as an optional extra, shurely.

"I said good racers, not particular shit episodes of RR. :>"

Take that back! TAKE THAT BACK!!!

/cries

"Arcade Racing is practically defined by the excitement generated from rubberband AI."

I know what you mean, but it's still cheap and nasty. And I don't find being beaten after driving a faultless race exciting. And I don't like AI that cheats.

They had that one mode in revenge where you just had to take down the AI, and they would just respawn in front of you if you drove too fast. That was exciting. but having terrible rubberband AI in a Race just defeats the point, because it ends up not being a race as other people have pointed out.

pfft, cry me a river, failures.

Arcade Racing is practically defined by the excitement generated from rubberband AI. Without the close racing element, it is nothing, you might as well be playing a rally game.

Well, ive played plenty of arcade racers and this is the first one in absolutely ages ive ever felt that the AI was close to breaking the game. Outrun, as mentioned was fine.

If only I was an internet hardman, maybe I could cope with it, but as it stands, actually having played the game it pisses me off no end.

As DOA4 was criticised for, when you win, you dont actually feel like you have achieved it through skill, but because the AI chose to cut you some slack, which takes away all the 'excitement generated from rubberband AI'.

Burnout 2 and 3 were both excellent, albeit in slightly different ways (2 for racing, 3 for causing mayhem).

I really didn't like the one where you were invulnerable to any car that was going the same way as you - was that 4?

A bit like Tony Hawk, I got a little fed up with the Burnouts. Perhaps I'll give this one a try.

Hmmm...

"I really didn't like the one where you were invulnerable to any car that was going the same way as you - was that 4? "

Yes, that was stupid. You could just keep your finger on the accelerator and smash everything out the way, like you were driving a block of granite. The horrible colour palette didn't help either, it was a blurry mess. Terrible game, never understood how it got such good reviews.

Christ, just because you liked the earlier games better doesn't forbid you from playing the new ones, they're still good fun.

Hmmm...

I'm betting most people would find Burnout Legends better value for their money, TBH.

"This sounds like a return to the Bunout 2 style of gameplay - so isn't it worth a try before dismissing it?"

so how is it progression when it returns to how it originally was? It's like "well, thats not going down too well, let's just do another burnout 2- but with some new cars and tracks "

if it's going back to burnout 2 style gameplay, then save some money and play burnout 2.

Burnt - out methinks

I'm with Nickthegun on this one. Rubberband AI is one thing, but the rubberband AI in the recent Burnout games completely break the gameplay.
The whole point is to work hard pulling of dangerous driving actions to raise your 'burnout' meter to gain access to a turbo which is supposed to reward you for your hard work by firing you further ahead. When this 'reward' is rendered not only useless, but actually makes the game harder to play without crashing means the game is officially broken.

It's why ever Burnout game I've bought as ended up straight back in the shops a week later out of sheer frustration.

Exciting? Anyone who remembers the rubberband AI in the bonus stage of the first Earthworm Jim knows that it doesn't make a game - arcade racer or not - more exciting. It's cheating, no two ways about that. It's not exciting, it's frustrating. It's like saying it's 'exciting' running a 100 metre sprint, when you are the only one with a bungie cord atttached to your back, where everytime you are pulled back yet again you are ready to punch someone.

Which is this now, the 21st in the series?

you speak as if no other Burnout game has had the "get boost, use boost, drive like psychopath to maintain boost" mechanic. In every Burnout I've played, this has been possible most of the time.

"so how is it progression when it returns to how it originally was? It's like "well, thats not going down too well, let's just do another burnout 2- but with some new cars and tracks " "

You use the word originally. Was Burnout 2 the original game in the series?

Poor comment - methinks

Great stuff. I'll be picking this up after my exams at the end of May. Can someone who has played it answer a few questions for me:

-Is the pursuit mode from burnout2 in dominator?
-When you press the boost button, does the music go fast like in B2?
-Bit wishful thinking, but are there any music tracks from B2 in there?

Frod wrote:'you sound like you want a sim racer, not an arcade racer.'

Thats exactlly what I want. Give us GT4 on psp NOW!!11!

I bought this yesterday and I am sorely disappointed. Loved legends, which is why I expected this to if not be better, but at least more of the same.

My main annoyances are art direction, presentation and design. In no particular order:
- The interface screens are uniformly shit
- The presentation of information is unlcear and very uninspired and subsequently uninspiring
- Load times are ++long, and sometimes feel useless (why did we just load a prerendered movie just to use as backdrop for saving to memorystick?)
- There are lots of load times
- Unskippable movie sequences
- Modelling and layout has focused on detail, not clarity, resulting in very crowded visuals (making it sometimes hard to see what is going on, and definitely not v pretty)
- soundtrack, while nicely selected (if you are into this kind of music) is badly presented as well, with new tracks starting with new screens (for instance after having loaded a FMVto tell you you unlocked a car)
- view angle when playing is IMHO rubbish, as in several instances car and GUI visuals will cover the road and your vanishing point (fucking schoolboy error)

...there's plenty more, but noone reads these rants, do they? :)

K.

Yeah, it's far from an improvement, as I guessed. Legends was and is just right. It still satisfies Burnout fans needs nowadays...

I bought this the other day, on the strength of this review and to be honest I want my money back, it feels limp and lifeless, licensed music and stunning graphics do not a great game make.

Nothing within the game makes me want to go back and play it again.

I'm really fucked off that I have it now, anyone want to swap?