The Revenge of Burnout

Let me explain one thing first, so when I start telling you this story, you won't think I'm that horrible a person. You'll probably think I'm a horrible person, but I hope by describing the circumstances, it'll mitigate the damage to your opinion of me.

It's a fact: the Xbox rocks like nobody's business. It is, graphically speaking, the best console out there. If you've ever played an Xbox game and then played the same game on the PS2, the PS2 version looks like it was drawn with crayon by a four year old compared to the Xbox version.

Okay, so now that that's out of the way, on to the story.

This weekend was the Cub's birthday. I had to get him a present. And I figured, "Hey, why not get him a video game?" And since we were both big fans of the previous installment, why not get Burnout Revenge?

So, when I got to EB Games, I noted that they had Burnout Revenge for PS2 and for Xbox. Which to get? I probably should have gotten the PS2 version. Since the Cub has a PS2 at the Folks' place, and no Xbox. However, it occurred to me that if I got the Xbox version, since I'm the guy with the Xbox, then it'd have to stay at my place. Which would mean that I'd be able to play it during the week! It'd be like getting me my own birthday present!

Oh yeah, and the graphics are better or some such.

Terrible! I know! But that's how it went down.

In any case, I've been playing the crap out of this game these last few days. It's fantastic like you wouldn't believe. Much like the previous version, they have this mission or level or whatever you'd call it called Crash. It works like this: You drive as fast as you can onto a ramp, and then smash into cars. The goal is to get your car where it'll do the most damage.

They tricked it up a little bit where it's harder to get started, and there's a bit of strategery about what kind of car you pick out. I liked the non-tricked-up version. It was more mindless and stupid, and frankly, I like mindless and stupid sometimes. But it's still very entertaining.

And I'm not sure if the actual races are easier in this one than the last one, or if I've just gotten good at these racing games. I think it's the former. The last Burnout was the first racing game I'd gotten into since Pole Position, so I had to ascend the learning curve for the whole genre of racing games.

Although, there's a new feature where, unlike in the previous games, if you plow into traffic that's going the same direction as you, it doesn't cause you to crash. No, the cars in front of you go flying. Which is really cool, I assure you.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because there's a song on the little game soundtrack that I liked so much, I went on the iTunes and downloaded it. Anyway, this morning, I played that song on the iPod, which put me in a racing mood, which I'm often in, since I'm driving some high performance German engineering. Add to it the fact that, unlike some cities, you can actually get going at a pretty good clip on the interstates, even during rush hour. And I'd spent several hours the night before playing a game where the basic strategy for dealing with inconvenient cars in front of you is to hit them from behind.

Okay, nothing happened. Although my instincts almost took over for a second there. And I shaved about five minutes off my commute this morning.