G-pinions

I've played a handful of the games I picked up last week at the $5 Circuit City clearance sale (which officially starts today, but good luck finding anything left), but Burnout 2 (Point of Impact: Director's Cut for X-Box) has quickly become my most-played game. I'd always been intrigued by the series and it's consistently good reviews, but rarely invest anything close to full price in racing titles since their replay is limited. At $5 though, I'll buy almost any game, and this one was a fucking steal like no steal before it.

The concept for the game is simple but brilliant - drive as dangerously as possible to drive as fast as possible. Each "near miss" you collect by almost brushing into oncoming traffic fills up your boost meter, which you can get a couple extra m.p.h. from when it's full. And when you use it, it stays almost full, so it only takes another near miss or two to fill up. You can imagine the ridiculous chains that can be performed. It extends beyond traffic, too - when you get into drifting (tapping brake at a sharp turn so that the back of your car spins out a bit, realigning you with the road), every corner you careen around skillfully gives you some boost for your meter; catching air off a bump on the highway does likewise. The ways and places in which you get more boost (besides driving close to other cars) all very feel natural, and are very subtly integrated. In other racing games, driving your best will help you win; in Burnout, they've added a middleman, which makes it ten times more fun than a regular race (if you didn't get these boosts, you'd never win, even with your best skills on display). I hate to spend so much time discussing such a simple gameplay device, but it's tough to appreciate unless you've played it.

All the basics in the game are top-notch as well. The graphics are gorgeous - there's a real sense of speed when you're racing, and the crashes look incredible in literal heart-pounding slow motion. The controls are as wonderfully simple as the game premise - right trigger to drive, left to brake, 'A' button to boost. That's really it. You can tap 'X' to glance behind you or 'Y' to change the song (more on that in a sec), but those obviously aren't integral to playing or enjoying the game. The menus are all simple and intuitive, and the load times are almost instant for restarting a race (a huge plus).

The main game is broken down into a couple different types of races. There's your typical lap races, one-off races to win a specific car, and pursuit races (play as a cop car, and catch up to and smash to bits a particular enemy car). All are totally enthralling, and all use the 'race dangerously' mechanic. And then, there's the Crash mode, probably the single greatest side mode in quite some time. Basically, you've got a small stretch of highway (or windy mountain path, seaside intersection, etc.) to cause the most chaos possible, and highest monetary damages. There are certain dollar amounts attached to broze, silver, and gold medals, ranging from $3 million to $50+ million. This gets insanely addictive, getting closer and closer to the desired amount with each attempt. And the difference usually comes down to the angle in which you smash the initial car's bumper or whether a bus grazes a lumber truck during the chain reaction. And sticking with the great presentation, each collision is presented in crashtacular slow motion, with a nice helicopter overview afterwards to show the extent of the destruction. You can even do it two-player, in a "beat this amount" horse-like game. Brilliant.

Last but not least, there's the custom soundtrack. This was the first time I'd taken advantage of this feature since getting my X-Box (and I think the only game I have that's capable of it), and holy tap-dancing christ is it great. Blazing along city streets (or spiraling through the air post-crash) listening to my favorite tunes is really fucking cool, and I now realize, really fucking underrated. No game should should be released without this feature. The X-Box has a damn hard drive, make some use of it. Oh, and while there isn't online play (wait for Burnout 3 for that), there are Live scoreboards you go check up on, showing where you rank for every race or crash or what have you. This sounds kinda lame, but seeing that I ranked only 805 in one crash test was pretty cool, and made me want to try that much harder to beat the record.

So, yes, this game is fantastic. If I'd have realized just how great it was earlier (and why), I would have certainly dropped fifty bones on it. The fact that I got it for five blows my mind. Kickass.