GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Excellent
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 03/12/2007
- Released on: 03/06/2007
- Originally published on GameSpot: Burnout Dominator (PSP) Review
The Burnout series has added and subtracted plenty of features over the past few years by continually adjusting and refining its hard-driving formula from iteration to iteration. Burnout Dominator isn't a proper sequel for the series, because Burnout 5 is currently in development for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Instead, Burnout Dominator takes bits and pieces of the driving mechanics and features from the past Burnout games and brings them together in a new way. The result is a slightly more skill-based racing game than the more combative approach taken in the last couple of games in the series, but the changes are slight enough that anyone looking for a high-speed racing game should find Burnout Dominator enjoyable.
The key to the Burnout series has always revolved around driving dangerously. When you drive on the wrong side of the road, catch air, narrowly miss traffic, or bash into another racer, you earn boost. The boost meter in Dominator is more like the boost features from Burnout 2. Rather than growing or shrinking, depending on how many other cars you take out, the boost meter has a set length. When you fill up the meter entirely, it turns blue, indicating that you're ready to supercharge. The goal at this point is to hit boost and hold it down until it's all gone. That's called a burnout. On top of that, when you're supercharging, driving dangerously fills up a secondary meter that governs how much boost you get when your burnout is completed. If you can fill that second meter, you refill entirely and continue your supercharge in what's called a burnout chain. By chaining burnouts together, you can effectively boost your way around the track at top speed. This gets tricky because you'll have to execute some risky maneuvers to keep your chain going, and you'll be doing all of that at top speed. It's an effective system that really gets the risk-versus-reward-style gameplay moving, regardless of the event.
The events in Dominator are what you'd expect to see from the Burnout series. The maniac races are new and give you a score readout for which you gain points by driving dangerously. You'll also encounter lap time challenges, drift events that ask you to drift a long distance while you drive, races that put you up against five other cars, a road rage challenge that gives you a ton of enemy cars to slam around, and so on. There's a nicely varied list of events, and the way the different events and car series unlock means that you'll always be doing something different. There isn't any crash mode in Dominator, which is too bad, because the crash mode always provided a nice change of pace.
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Burnout Dominator (PSP):
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