As far as I can recall, I've only ever played the demos of the early Burnout games, arcadey racers that have a particular fondness for metal crumpling in slow motion. They weren't bad demos if you wanted to race through city streets and ludicrous speeds, inches away from instant death, pushing your luck ever more in search of that little bit more boost for an increase in speed.
What the titles couldn't offer in fancy graphics and licensed cars, they made up for in thumping tunes and carnage, with Burnout 2: Point of Impact referencing the destructive nature of the game in its title. This is a racing game, and coming first is your goal, but it's not what draws you to Burnout, is it?
Whatever could that be?
Fun Times
Point of Impact doesn't get going until you've proven yourself in Offensive Driving 101. Where Gran Turismo has you stopping in a designated zone, Burnout has you driving into oncoming traffic. Where Gran Turismo teaches you how to corner, slow in, fast out, Burnout teaches you how to drift around corners to increase your boost meter and drive ever faster.
After a handful of lessons, you're ready.
I jumped behind the wheel of a nondescript Coupe, painted red because the red ones go faster, and got up to speed with a championship. Three street races against three other drivers, in full traffic, along with all the dangers that involve.
Controlling Burnout 2s cars is as simple as holding down the accelerator button and pointing in the right direction. There is a brake for sketchy moments, but don't use that. You wuss. You could use the brake to start drifting, but there appears to be an auto-drift thing going on, so everything is set up for you to just go fast.
That includes the boost button. Fill up your meter by driving into traffic and narrowly missing cars, trucks, buses and whatever else is on the road, or by drifting around corners and catching air off bumps in the road. Drain it by pressing and holding R1 for a burst of speed that continues for as long as you keep the button held down, and for as long as there is juice in the boost bar.
But don't be silly and crash. Don't drive so fast that you can't react to danger soon enough. Don't be that guy that ends up killing someone through reckless driving. Though it is usually cool to see when Burnout 2 slows down the action, and the sparks and the debris and the insurance claims fill up the screen. A second or two later, you're back on track, possibly having lost a place or two, playing catch up.
But that's what illegal street racing is all about. That's the risk you take in search of more boost. You don't want to just play a racing game, you want to push your luck.
When you go fast, the music gets louder. When you boost and go faster still, the music amps up in an attempt to keep up with you. Everything is louder, everything is faster, and you could be mere seconds away from losing it all.
Just because you're draining it for the speed, doesn't mean your boost bar stops keeping track of your ridiculous driving. Often one boost leads straight into another, and maybe even a third if you can keep it up. Letting go of the boost button just once ends your run - how far are you willing to push it? Are you prepared to see how skilled you are?
Crashing is a setback, sure, but it's only a few seconds before you're back into the action, and whatever mess you made turns into a mess for every other racer too. If you can catch them out at the same time - or better yet force them into a crash of their own - all the better.
After a successful championship, unlocking more stuff to do, there was only one mode that needed to be addressed. Races and championships are everywhere. The Crash mode isn't.
The mode is simple: Drive, crash, count up your score. It's all about chain reactions here. The more things there are for you to crash into, the more mayhem there is for the AI to then crash into. It's an active scene. Nobody is expecting a collision. They can't all have perfect reaction times or a sixth sense to danger. Metal is going to collide with more metal. Marvellous.
It's such an easy concept to grasp that P2 took control and climbed up the rankings. Show off.
Frustrations
The scores required to progress through the Crash mode ramped up considerably throughout just three scenarios, requiring you to understand at least a little about the physics at play here, as well as when the best time to use your boost is. It's quick to retry, though, so repeated attempts will see some improvement if you stick with it, but I was about done with Burnout 2 by this point.
Final Word
It wasn't that I was annoyed at not reaching a score threshold, it was more that I'd gotten the gist of what Burnout 2 had to offer, and didn't need to carry on to see what I was missing. It was an arcade racer with fancy smash graphics. It has its place, it's fun to play, but it's not going to stick around.
I was emulating the PlayStation 2 version, and was met with slowdown here and there, which impacted the sense of speed I felt during the racing, but not enough so that it made it impossible to play, and not enough to have me worry about finishing anywhere other than first - in the first championship, admittedly, but you get the idea.
I've got the disc, though, so could try it out on original hardware but... I'm just not interested enough to do so. Burnout 2 is fun, sure, but as a distraction, as a time filler. I've been playing a lot of Forza Horizon 4 recently, and while it doesn't have explosive slow motion, it does has plenty of illegal street races, an immense sense of speed, and licensed cars getting utterly wrecked after jumping through every kind of environment.
So if Burnout can go open world, and next-gen, that'd be gre-- what's this? Burnout Paradise is on the 1001 list? Oh. Well. That'll be fun.
Play Burnout in some form. Don't expect a whole lot from it, certainly at this stage in the series, but there's plenty to enjoy. Will you be invested in it for any great length of time? Maybe. You'll have to floor it to find out.
Fun Facts
Presented without comment: "To promote the game, Acclaim offered to reimburse any driver in the United Kingdom who received a speeding ticket. Following a negative reaction to this from the UK government, the plan was cancelled."
Burnout 2: Point of Impact, developed by Criterion Games, first released in 2002.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2002, via emulation.