The Burnout series started back in 2001 with the release of the original Burnout for the PlayStation 2.  Over the years the series has seen some changes which have included an emphasis on car combat, an open world environment, and even stunts.  While I love each of these games, and especially Burnout Paradise, I keep coming back to play Burnout 2.  I like that Burnout 2 is a simpler game.  There is no open world.  You can’t cause your opponents to wreck.  You pick a race, pick your car, and just worry about going as fast as you can without hitting anything.  I love these types of racing games.  They’re straight and to the point.  I don’t want to take a boring virtual drive to the next race, I just want to race.  This is not to say that Burnout 2 is a simple, and tame racing game, because it’s so not that.

The actual racing in Burnout 2 is extremely fast and wild.  If it doesn’t get your heart pumping, and your hands shaking, then you’re just not living, or maybe you’re just really really good at the game.  The sense of speed in Burnout 2 is very fast.  It’s made even faster when your turbo boost kicks in.  When that happens it feels like you’re in that drag race scene from the first Fast and Furious movie.  The edges of the screen become blurred, the horizon seems to stretch out, you’ll hear a rush from your turbo, the music volume gets cranked to 10, and your car blasts off with you barely in control.  It’s quite a rush when this happens, and it’s a rush trying to make it happen.  You you gain boost by doing maniacal things such as driving on the wrong side of the road, narrowly missing traffic, drifting around turns, and having your car catch some air.  You can only use your boost when it is full, but any crazy driving you do while using your boost will go towards filling your next boost gauge.  If you’re good enough, you can keep your boost going and going.  The car control goes something like this: understeer, understeer, understeer, oversteer.  Understeer is good for maneuvering through traffic, but you’ll need that oversteer to slide around corners.  Learning the point at which understeer turns into oversteer is the key to doing well in this game.  You can also tape the brake to force your car into oversteer.

Hit any traffic at a decent speed, or hit a corner head on, and your car will spectacularly crash.  You may even cause a chain reaction crash involving other racers and traffic.  While these crashes pale in comparison to the newest Burnout game, they were really impressive in 2002, and those chain reactions are still fun to watch.  If these crashes are your thing, then you can skip the racing part of it, and play the crash mode.  The crash mode has you purposely driving your car into a very busy intersection in order to create the most destructive chain reaction crash.  The more cars involved crash, the higher the crash multiplier goes up, and the bigger score you get.  This mode is hugely fun!  I don’t know why it ever took this long for someone to implement a mode like this into a game.  The game also keeps track of numerous statistics and best times, and unlike way too many of today’s games you don’t have to be online to view them.

I think that the graphics in Burnout 2 are still pretty good today.  Part of this is due to the fact that I play my original Xbox games on the Xbox 360 which upscales the games to HD.  The framerate is also extremely smooth.  The music is kind of generic, but it’s still cool when the volume increases while you’re using your boost.  If any PlayStation 2 owners are wondering what the “Developer”s Cut” is all about, it adds 15 new crash zones to the crash mode, and there are also some additional car paint jobs.  If you have a choice, go for the Xbox version, and play it on HD on your Xbox 360.  If not then it’s no big deal, because it’s great on the PlayStation 2, and I’ll assume it’s great for the Gamecube as well.  It nearly goes without saying at this point, but Burnout 2 is mega-fun even after all these years, and it’s a must have for arcade style racing fans.

Rating – 9 / 10

If you’ve played one Test Drive game, you really haven’t played the others, because there is so much variety in the series.  You have standard street racing games, off road games, rally games, and more serious racing games.  Test Drive: Eve of Destruction released by Atari in 2004 takes low budget, small town dirt track racing, and turns it into a very fun game.

I don’t care how much a complete, and mint copy of this game goes for on Ebay, I’ll never get rid of this classic.

The career mode tends to be like Gran Turismo.  You start off with a small amount of money in which you buy a small car.  By winning races you can upgrade your car, or buy a faster one.  Instead of going through boring menus, you drive your car to the garage, or car dealership, or race track.  The race types are absolutely wild, and I would really love to see some of them in real life.  They’re all setup for maximum mayhem.  Some tracks have jumps, and some are in a figure-8 layout.  Others have half the cars going clockwise, and the other half going the opposite direction.  The Gauntlet race has one person trying to complete a race in a hearse, while the other drivers try to take him out.  Another one has one player driving a school bus, and tries to take out the other drivers.  There is your standard demolition derby event.  The Push Off has cars trying to push one another off a hill.  Other races have you towing a trailer, or have you chained to another car.  There are others race types as well, but just too many to type them all here.  All of these events are just as fun as they sound.

My favourite way to play this game is split screen with four friends.  It is always a great time, and it’s a popular choice for when my friends and I get together for a game night.  This game is not only backwards compatible with the Xbox 360, but it upscales the graphics to high definition.  This means that even in the four way split screen mode, the graphics look good.  The framerate for the four way split screen is also very smooth.  The soundtrack is early 2000’s rock music such as Rob Zombie and Sum 41.  The engine sound effects, and crashing sound effects sound great, as does the track announcer.  I’ve noticed that this game sells for a lot of money on Ebay.  As of this writing the cheapest price I see before shipping charges is $35, and that is for the disc only.  I guess the reason is that there really isn’t another game out there like this.  If this game sounds fun, and you see it for a reasonable price, then pick it up immediately.