Burnout Legends Thoughts

september 15, 2005

OK, so I got to play an hour (or two) of Burnout Legends on my PSP and here are my initial thoughts on the game. The game is a good (not perfect) PSP representation of Burnout 3: Takedown with some Burnout and Burnout 2 mixed into it. It is really more Burnout 3 than the first two. The graphics, as expected, are not as hot as the PS2 or Xbox versions. But, it's a helluva show-off game for the PSP's abilities and graphics prowness. The sound is fantastic and there are some 21 EA Trax on there for listening (my favorite being "Shotgun" by The Outline). I wish that some of the Burnout 3 songs would have been included also, but hell that's asking for too much. The gameplay is fantastic! Criterion did a great job of adding bloom to the headlights and taillights of cars in order to give me clues to where traffic is -- this is to offset the smaller screen and lower resolution of the PSP when compared to a console hooked up to a TV. The game moves as fast and smooth as its big brothers, which is quite a feat. The Pursuit mode from Burnout 2 makes a return and I am having a ball with it. Road Rage is still the "rage" of the game though. That is my favorite mode. The car models look good. They are shiny and reflective, but don't have all the polygons of their big brothers (that's OK). When they crash, they still break into a gazillion parts and that looks very cool. In Crash Mode, the non-player cars do not deform (only windows break), but that's OK. In any of the race modes, there are only three other competitor CPU cars instead of the five on the consoles. The only "problem" with that is that the Eliminator races are a lot shorter (I am not complaining because I thought the console Eliminator races were too long). I tried Game Sharing with my wife last night. The game got sent over and we almost got to start a game together, but the network connection got hosed for some reason. The transfer of the software took maybe three to five minutes. It was a wait, but not too long. We'll have to try it again later on. Overall, I like the game a lot. I am looking forward to Burnout Revenge also (for the PS2), but for now I'll be kept busy by Burnout Legends. If you have a PSP, this is definitely a game to pick up -- the other racing games (and there are a ton of them for the PSP) pale in comparison to Burnout Legends.


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