What am I missing?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but from what I've played "burnout" should be part of another game, not really a game by itself.

I'll be honest I've never played a burnout game before but I have Midnight Club 3 and Ridge Racer for PSP and love them both, alone with a host of other racing games for various systems. I LOVE racing games! But with Burnout I'm at a complete loss as to what's so great about it and after reading so many positive reviews I'm rather disappointed.

First, the graphics are nice but not ps2 or psp quality, more like psone. Midnight Club 3 and Ridge Racer both look MUCH better on the PSP.

Second, the game itself. Basically you have 4 modes. You can chase someone as a cop and try to wreck their car (pursuit), or you can drive around trying to crash other cars (forget the name), or you can race around the city for the fastest lap, and then there's the last mode where they setup a scenario and you try to make the biggest crash possible involving the most number of vehicles. Seems to me these modes could be part of Midnight Club 3 or Ridge Racer or any of the other games, but by themself it seems rather boring.

And your reward for accomplishing these tasks? Photographic screenshots, different trophies (bronze, silver & gold) and new vehicles. There's no major difference between the vehicles, i mean the truck seems slower than the other cars but you wont notice one car being significantly faster than another. There's no upgrading the vehicles either, doesnt even give you specs, just here's the car and the name of it.

The music is also uninteresting, bunch of groups you've probably never heard of. That would have been fine 5 yrs ago but with NFS and Midnight Club both using real music you recognize it's kinda a letdown.

One good thing: FAST LOAD TIMES! Unlike Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition for PSP (i have a review of that too on here) that takes over a minute to load levels Burnout loads levels within seconds, which is a good thing because if it didnt I dont think I'd be playing the game at all, it's simply not that interesting.

Another good thing: tons of courses, but really if you've seen one you've seen them all, it's not like NFS or Gran Turismo where you'll be racing at nite in a city then day and on the coast or forests. It's always perfect weather and you're racing through cities.

I'd love to see some Burnout style levels in Midnight Club, where there could be a mode that you take the cars you built and go crash them into other vehicles. That would be cool, but trying to make it a game by itself doesnt work.

To wrap it up if you're considering purchasing this game because you like racing games and you've never played Burnout before I'd recommend you rent it or play it somewhere to make sure you'll like it. The videos and screenshots of the game make it look much better than it really is.