Burnout Crash! is a puzzle game about causing car wrecks, and that is not a contradiction. Criterion Games built the whole thing around a single idea: drive into a busy intersection, then make the pile-up as large as you can. Electronic Arts published it in 2011 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iOS. It is a downloadable Burnout game, and it is the strangest one in the series.
Trailer, via GameSpot.
Six Intersections, Three Modes
The formula is simple. You pick an intersection, drive into traffic, and score points for damage. Destroying the environment counts. Destroying other vehicles counts. The bigger the chain, the better the number. Points are the whole language of the game.
Burnout Crash! plays from a bird’s-eye or aerial view. That is a break from the rest of the series, which had always put you behind the wheel at ground level. Here you look down on the wreck like a spectator at a demolition derby. The camera never lets you forget you are causing this on purpose.
There are three game modes and six different intersections to play. There are seven drivable vehicles, including the Vegas Saloon. That is the full content list, and it is not long.
The Xbox 360 version adds a Kinect mode, which lets you use gestures to control the game. That is the only version with motion controls, and it is the kind of feature that dates a game the moment the peripheral does.
Autolog Turns a Solo Score Public
Leaderboards powered by EA’s Autolog service let players compare scores with other players. That is the one job the game needs: it turns a solo score into a public one.
That matters more than it sounds. Burnout Crash! is single player only. There is no head-to-head mode, no split screen, no online race. The competition is entirely asynchronous. You chase a number on a board, not a person on a track.
For a party-themed arcade game, that is a real limitation. The theme is action and party, but the mode is one player alone with a controller. The Autolog board is the only thing standing between this and a solitary high-score chase.
What Each Platform Gets
The platforms differ in control and in little else. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions are the console builds. The iOS version is listed on the iTunes App Store. The core loop — drive in, wreck everything, compare scores — is the same everywhere.
| Platform | Storefront | Extra feature |
|---|---|---|
| PlayStation 3 | PlayStation Network | None listed |
| Xbox 360 | Xbox Live Arcade | Kinect gesture controls |
| iOS | iTunes App Store | None listed |
The table is short because the game is short. Criterion did not build three different games. It built one game and moved it to three places.
The Last Burnout Before Criterion Moved On
Burnout Crash! was the last title in the series before much of Criterion’s staff moved over to the Need for Speed series. The remaining staff took on additional work on non-racing titles. That is the note the game goes out on, and it explains a lot.
- Three game modes
- Six intersections
- Seven drivable vehicles, including the Vegas Saloon
- One Kinect mode, on Xbox 360 only
- Autolog leaderboards for score comparison
Read that list again. It is a small game. It behaves like one. There is no reason to keep playing past the next score.
That is not automatically a failure. A downloadable arcade game can be a tight, repeatable thing. Burnout Crash! is tight. The question is whether it is repeatable enough.
The Aerial Camera Solves an Old Problem
The aerial camera is the smartest decision here. It solves a design problem the series had been circling for years. Burnout was always about spectacular crashes, but a behind-the-wheel view can only show you so much of one. Pull the camera up, and the whole intersection becomes readable at once. You can see the chain reaction building. You can plan the next hit.
But the view also removes you from the action. In earlier Burnout games, the crash was something that happened to you. Here it is something you do to a board full of pieces. The thrill is more mechanical and less physical. Some players will prefer that. It is a cleaner puzzle, and it is a colder one.
The scoring rewards destruction, which means the game has no interest in skill behind the wheel. You are not racing anyone. You are not even really driving, in the sense the series used to mean. You are aiming a car at a crowd and then watching the arithmetic.
That is a genuine genre shift, and the game does not hide it. The genres are puzzle, racing and arcade. Only one of those three words describes what you actually spend your time doing.
What 7.2 Out of 10 Buys You
Burnout Crash! scores 7.2 out of 10. That number comes from the published critical aggregate across five outlets, and it lands about where the game deserves to land.
What works: the aerial view, the clean scoring, the Autolog boards, and the discipline to build one idea and not pad it. What does not: the thin content list and the single-player-only structure. Six intersections and seven cars is not a lot to hold a player past a weekend.
The bigger problem is what the game is not. It is the last Burnout title before Criterion’s staff scattered to Need for Speed and other work. There is no ambition here to match the series it belongs to. It is a clever downloadable experiment that happens to carry a famous name.
That is the part worth weighing. Burnout Crash! is small, and it carries a big franchise’s name. The mismatch is the whole story. Play it for the pile-ups. Do not expect the series to show up with them.
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