Burnout drifts to the PSP

Well I have to be honest. Although I played Burnout 3 I never actually owned it. As I waited for the price to fall to 20 bucks EA brewed up a portable reincarnation of its Burnout series and crammed as much as they could from 1-3 in Burnout: Ledgen. So it was either Burnout 3 (which was already a year old but it had online play) or Ledgens which is essentially mostly Burnout 3 with some extra stuff like pursuit mode (which isn't all that great, but not bad either). I obviously choose Ledgens despite the absence of online play.

First off you must know this game is massive. I was suprised to see such depth in this racer. Theres tons of cars to drive, although you can't really tell the difference to much except in the classes. Theres about 5 classes that range from sport to super. Each one has their own special look for a car named "Dominator" then "Assasin" and a few others. Theres plenty of cars to choose from but, unfortunetly, you have to unlock 20 with multiplayer. This wouldn't be so bad if there was online play but it's only Ad-hoc (local). Everyone is given 1 type of car that is preloaded on the game and you basically play for it. So that means to unlock these cars you need at least 4 friends with PSP's with this game and thats assuming there's no repeats. It was a poor design choice IMO especially since Burnout 3 and 4 (Revenge) both have online play and would have made this game's experience much more enjoyable.

Another reason why this game is so huge is the sheer number of levels. Theres a different tour mode for every class of cars and a crash mode with 100 tracks/areas. This take a while to finish as you can imagine. Especially when some levels can be near impossible. Right now I'm on the "Drive Angry" level in crash mode which requires around $600,000 in total damage to complete but I've tried for literally months and it seems like it can't be done. It takes a lot of patience especially later in the game when the other modes get real difficult. At first I would always get Gold metals and now (I'm in the 2nd to last class) I tend to get a few silvers that I come back to later.

Other then the monster ammount of content in this game is the production values which are pretty high. First you've got the typical EA Trax with all licenced music which isn't all that great actually. It's really just a lot of punk rock that mostly sounds the same. I'm sure some people can appreciate it but its not my kind of music. Although its not so bad and worth listening to at times. Other then the soundtrack, the sound is superb. Crash effects sound spot-on and turning on boost and whizzing by sounds unbelievably speedy. Theres all these little sound clips that you hear when you fill your boost bar and things like that. Along with the sound goes the graphics. Now theres a few problems here and there with jaggies and little detail in some places like the crash effects. In fact, there is very little damage done to the car (or any car) when it crashes which makes it look like crap compared to Burnout: Revenge which is a shame since the PSP probably could pull it off. The "sense of speed" where the motions would blur like in Burnout 3 are also gone which is sad but the game still looks fantastic. Car models look nice and shiny and the levels are beautiful. Of course all these high quality things come at a cost: the load times.

*beginning of rant*
Now normally I wouldn't go to indepth but this is a major issue and important. When you play any mode its probably about a 25 second load time (yes I timed it if you must know). Now this isn't bad since it was made when the PSP was still early on. Plus it doesn't really matter to much (at least to me) when its loading something huge like a world tour course. But when you get to crash mode and wait 25 seconds to get to a screen that tells you your goal and then loads AGAIN for another 5 seconds and then wait 3 seconds to finally start it starts to suck. I mean in crash mode it takes about 15 seconds to start your crash and finish and wait for the time to tick out. Then you have to wait for another load screen to go to your results so if you've failed you have to suffer through another load screen to start over and it starts all over again (no the initial 25 second load though). But if you hit restart in the middle of the course then it loads to show you what your target is and another load screen after that again. It just gets frustrating.
*end of rant*

The last thing up is the game's modes. I probably should have went through this earlier but there are several modes. The first that comes to mind is road rage where you basically try to run everyone off the road. I don't know how else to explain it but you just crash into the other guys. Another mode is race which is self-explainitory. There's also Pursuit which is like road rage except its you vs 1 car and your the cop. There's finishing lap where you half to finish a course in a specified time. There's also a 1 on 1 like mode where you play for the CPU's car. I'm pretty sure thats all the modes but their all fun in their own way and add a lot of depth and variety. Their sure to entertain arcadey racer fans. If I could, I would give this game a 4.5 but I guess it will just settle for a four.