Burnout Legends for PSP

It was inevitable that Burnout would finally make an appearance on portable consoles, seeing that the PSP finally brought the power to render the experience without major sacrifices (though the game is coming to the Nintendo DS in less pretty form). However, instead of merely porting a version of Burnout Revenge, or even Burnout 3, Criterion apparently was headed for the Ridge Racer route and designing the game, christened Burnout Legends, as a 'greatest hits' of sorts, mixing in tracks, modes, and cars from each of the original trio of racers – or at least, that's what was expected when the game first saw the light of day. Combined with Burnout Revenge, it was effectively going to be the majority of Criterion's work inside a pair of games, finally brought to fans of the series who didn't play much of the Acclaim-published originals but got hooked on Takedown once EA took the publishing reigns.

Instead, what you're getting with Burnout Legends is a slightly reworked (but not a direct port, mind you) Burnout 3 rather than something all-new, with a handful of the courses and cars from Burnout and Burnout 2 added to the fray, with minimal fanfare. This certainly doesn't discount that a portable Burnout 3 is not a bad thing – after all, it was one of the most critically acclaimed titles of 2004, racing game or not. Some corners were slightly cut, the graphics and other technical aspects have moments of failure, and the heavy emphasis on Burnout 3 might annoy older fans of the series who hoped to see things from Takedown applied en masse to Burnout and Burnout 2, but you're still getting a great racing game, even if it's on a handheld system loaded with racing games. With loads of variety and replay however, Burnout Legends could last PSP owners a long, long time before getting the holy grail of 100% completion.

Like the most recent console renditions of Burnout, Legends features a massive World Tour single player campaign, with exactly 175 different events. It's split into a pair of ladders – race events and Crash events, both of which function independently of each other. The race events (split into classes that you progress through) are made up of the usual Burnout trademarks – basic races, Road Rage, Eliminator, Burning Laps, and returning from Burnout 2, Pursuit. Most of the events work the same way as Burnout 3, with the exception being Road Rage which now contains a clock counting down time, so not only do you have to get enough takedowns for a medal before getting wiped out yourself, you've gotta do it quickly. Pursuit has the same basic idea of taking out an opposing car with your custom law enforcement vehicle, but this time you have to get a takedown on the car to win, something impossible in Burnout 2 because the concept of takedowns weren't implemented yet. Most of these events take place on Burnout 3 tracks, as just a handful of the 'legends' courses have made the cut. Considering most of these weren't designed for the style of play that Burnout 3 brought, this isn't really a surprise.

Furthering the Burnout 3 conspiracy, Crash events not only work the same way as Burnout 3, they're basically the exact same ones from that game, with maybe a couple new junctions – none of which use the classic tracks. The only difference is the multipliers are gone, with just the cash and crashbreaker pickups remaining. This actually makes some of the junctions much trickier since there's no way to make up for some mistakes with a 4x multiplier, but at the same time there's no fear of ending up with one of those damned heartbreakers. Unfortunately, after experiencing the new Crash events in Burnout Revenge, this recycled batch of junctions feels old and busted sometimes, lacking much of the strategy and mass chaos that you get in Revenge's revamped version. It doesn't help that Criterion didn't bother to make any new junctions based on the older tracks; not even the ones from Burnout 2 where the whole Crash concept was first given life. Even the Single Event options don't allow for a customized Crash junction – something I really hope makes it into next-generation versions of the game.

Also like Takedown, there's a pretty large amount of rewards to unlock, such as Takedown Trophies, Crash Headlines, Signature Takedowns, and of course, lots of cars for reaching score goals. Not to sound like a broken record, but again, Legends merely recycles all these from Burnout 3, and there's nothing new created for the older tracks. As with Takedown, you can achieve these goals and unlock the rewards not only in World Tour events, but also by playing Single Events – it was a nice touch then and it still is. Multiplayer consists of basic Ad Hoc multiplayer, with no actual online. A disappointment, but Criterion did at least make playing the Ad Hoc multiplayer worthwhile. If you have a friend with one of the Wi-Fi only special cars, you can race them, and then beat them to take the car for yourself. There's still tons upon tons of cars to unlock on your own, so these aren't required, but it's nice to actually earn something from playing something other than 1 player things. In addition, Burnout Legends contains game sharing, letting you 'beam' a demo of the game to a friend, or merely let them race against you even if they don't own a copy of the game, but still own a PSP.

Obviously, the biggest challenge of Burnout Legends was bringing the same experience you can find on the PS2 (or Xbox) without sacrificing the stuff that makes Burnout what it is. For the most part, this goal was achieved, and Legends has been pulled off very well. All the same rules apply – traffic is the enemy, and hitting any of it results in a spectacular crash. This fear of crashing is used by Criterion in all the ways you'd expect – intersections with buses coming through, racing around corners to find a bunch of cars in your face, or climbing a hill only to ram into the trunk of an innocent bystander. And that's before dealing with the AI cars that are looking to pull all kinds of crap in order to slam you into walls, traffic, whatever is nearby. Burnout has always been a game where every aspect of the game is an enemy or opponent that must be dealt with. Where things got interesting was the inclusion of takedowns, which put a more direct emphasis on your opponents, and adding another wrinkle to dealing with traffic. For the first time you could logically use traffic as a weapon, by slamming cars into them. Not only that, but you could slam cars around into walls, barriers, buildings, medians...pretty much anywhere on the track.

Legends functions the same exact way. Not only do you have to deal with the constant fear of traffic getting in the way (nothing like rounding the last corner only to slam into a bus and lose the race), the opponent AI would like nothing more than taking you out by any means necessary, and at times you'll probably work the same way, looking to wipe out any opponent, human or AI, that gets past you or threatens to pass, if only for the necessary boost so you can fly by at higher speeds to put some distance between yourself and opponents. Legends does seem to have less traffic than in Takedown – either that or I've been playing Revenge so much that the abundance of traffic in that game makes it look much more deserted. Speaking of, Legends doesn't carry the traffic checking of Revenge, which actually makes the standard races and eliminator events challenging again, since there's no using traffic as a weapon to get rid of pesky AI or human opponents. It's probably the only aspect of Legends that's superior to Revenge, since it's taken straight from Burnout 3. Speaking of the AI, it functions similarly to Burnout 3 (duh), so get ready for some difficult races thanks to the rubberband tactics. Thankfully, one good aspect is the AI never runs an event perfectly, and actually it's quite enjoyable to watch them make crazy errors and fly 20 feet into the air after hitting a median.

What Burnout Legends does perfectly is build on the addictive quality the franchise is famous for. Many of the events are designed for quick fixes, which is perfect for a portable format. Though the game is very heavy on Crash events – of the 175 total events in World Tour, 100 of them are of the Crash variety – there's still a lot going on to break up any possible monotony that could come around with so many things to participate in. Each one is different enough to break up the progression – while the races are usually pretty serious affairs with tough opponent cars, Road Rage features looser physics making it far easier to get takedowns, a wise idea considering the whole idea of Road Rage is to take out as many opponents as possible before totaling your own ride. Though the Eliminator event of Legends isn't quite as intense as in Revenge, since it's dictated by laps instead of knocking the last place car out every 30 seconds, it's still great. Only Pursuit really disappoints – it wasn't exactly great in Point of Impact, and though it's reworked to require a takedown, it's not always much fun, and if you're really good, they can last mere seconds. Seriously, Pursuit is as simple as intentionally crashing when your target is in range, get an aftertouch takedown which wipes their health down to practically nothing, and just give 'em one good ram into a wall...and it's over. It's nice to see it return, but it could and should have been done much better.

Legends is one of those games that translates well to PSP in terms of function – every button on the PSP is used, yet it never feels like they've cramped up the game to make up for the lack of the 2nd analog stick and L2/R2 buttons. The game does play well with the nub, though some of the cars can slip and slide far too easily which creates out-of-control scenarios compared to other cars that handle as if they were on rails. It's a little stiff on the aftertouch within Crash events – the car sometimes just doesn't quite go the way you want to, though sometimes it's more based on momentum – if you're going one direction, it's hard even with impact time to turn around a different way after a brutal crash. Fans of the games can jump right on in and play without getting used to anything, aside from perhaps the smaller buttons and more cramped feel – especially Xbox players used to the triggers that all racing games use on that console (not to mention those who use the original Xbox controller that's the size of Rhode Island).

The mistake in looking at Burnout Legends is comparing it to Revenge. Given that Revenge revamped pretty much everything, Legends can seem old since it's so heavily reliant on Burnout 3. Certainly the courses are all great (even the older ones), but at the same time, Revenge completely revamped the entire concept by introducing alternate routes and whatnot, making these straightfoward, linear courses a bit pedestrian in comparison. Same goes for Crash mode, which seems archaic now after spending so much time with the one in Revenge with such complicated junctions. Looking at Legends as an individual game, however, it's easy to see how amazing a job was done bringing such a massive game to the PSP – with all the events to complete and get golds on, you could put 20 hours or so into Legends, something unheard of not just for a racing game not named Forza or Gran Turismo, but for a portable system. Yet at the same time, the game is designed to fit the portable mantra of quick fix entertainment – never does Legends require you to spend hours behind the screen wrapped up in some lengthy event, aside from the Grand Prix events, and even those last 10 minutes at the most. This is one of those games that can last you months if you're a casual PSP player – not bad for $50. It's still disappointing that so little of the older material was used in any relevant way, but I can't honesty complain about what's not there when what is there happens to be based upon one of 2004's best games – and regardless of what's missing and what's not, Burnout Legends is yet another quality title in the books for Criterion.

Visually, Burnout Legends looks really good – especially for a portable game – but at the same time, doesn't quite keep up with Takedown or Revenge. Unlike, say, Ridge Racer, which was built for PSP directly, Legends obviously was ported over from the console versions, and it shows. Cars look good and the tracks retain all the great environments from before, but the sense of speed is a little slower, especially when you take it off Boost, and then it feels like a drag. It's still very fast, but compared to the console versions, it's a step back. In addition, it can be difficult to see the difference between an opponent car and basic traffic, even with the indicator right there – the depth perception is off a bit so you might slam into the wrong car from time to time if you don't have really quick reflexes. A great deal of the special effects are here though, from flying sparks, crazy crashes, and of course, the mayhem of a zillion cars slamming into each other. Which brings up another tolerable issue – Crash events can wind up in slowdown hell after a while, when there's dozens of vehicles on the screen at a time. But you know what? Burnout had some really odd visual flaws on the PlayStation 2 when it shipped, and by the time we got to Legends, those problems were all but gone. For a first effort on new hardware, it turned out pretty good, and I'll bet by the next Burnout PSP appearance, it will look even better.

One thing Legends does borrow from Burnout Revenge is its soundtrack. There's no original EA Trax this time around, as roughly 3/4ths of the Revenge tracks return for Legends. Unfortunately some of the better tunes from Revenge have been taken away, so no Maximo Park or Bloc Party for you! Instead, you can get Yellowcard, Junkie XL, Morningwood, The Dead 60's amongst others, for a total of 17 tracks. It's a shame nobody has gotten the message about using custom soundtracks using MP3s put on a memory stick pretty much everywhere, including Legends, which has no such options. Most of the usual sound effects make appearances in Legends, from the sounds of cars slamming into each other, the crush of a vicious crash, engines roaring, and horns beeping as you get close for a near miss bonus. What's weird is the sound you get when you rub against a car on a wall – it's like someone recorded one of those squeaking ducks when you start trading paint.

The Last Paragraph

If the objective was to bring Burnout goodness to the PlayStation Portable without sacrificing too much, Criterion and EA pulled it off pretty well with Burnout Legends. Cramming all the cars, events, options, and even a large soundtrack into one UMD is nothing short of masterful, providing exactly what the PSP needs to grow – games designed to be played in spurts, yet as massive as the same sort of game on the home systems. The visuals are decidedly 1st generation PSP, and the sense of speed has dropped a bit, and the presence of the earlier titles pre-Burnout 3 is minimal, but otherwise Legends is a great game that captures what made Burnout 3 such a phenomenon last year, only for on-the-go gamers, who now can create chaos riding the bus, or the train...even a plane. But please, don't play Burnout Legends while actually driving your car.