There are basically two types of racing fans when it comes to video games. The “Die-Hard” Fans who love to tweak and customize their cars and those who love a great arcade type of game. I happen to fall into a third category. Personally if it plays great and is fun, let me at it!

I am sure I am not by myself in this category. I have found several other gamers who feel the same way. I happened to remember a game that had the best intro of any racing game I had ever seen. Then as usual I never heard about the game again. That is until Climax and Eidos brought out the Budget racer, Crash ‘N’ Burn. The game combines the thrill of building your own car and the thrill of speed while throwing in one other important element… crashing!

While the game can’t touch other racing titles such as NFSU 2 and Burnout 3, it has found sort of an underground following online. In fact there are even races every Sunday and Wednesday nights each week and the scores are posted on the Eidos website. Also throw in the fact that the game took off in England better than in The North American market, you can see the game has some interesting potential. Buckle up and grab your helmet as I give you the run down on a wild budget racer.

Gameplay

You would never guess this was a budget title from all of the game modes and options they included. For starters there is a pretty intense offline career mode where you start off in the compact series and earn money and experience points to buy parts, paint and even new car parts. You can even play online in any of the 10+ modes and still gain experience and money to use to build up your car. A few of the more intense modes include Bomb tag, Running man, Last man standing, Team Kamikaze and my favorite, 16-man Kamikaze. Imagine 16 compacts, pickups, muscle cars and sports cars all looking mean and ready to win at any cost. In simple English it’s a 16-man free for all and whoever finishes with the race first wins.

If that does not get any racing fan excited, you should see the game in action. You also get bonus money and points for wrecking someone and causing them to blow up as well as leading each lap and setting a fastest lap record. The first few levels will go by fast enough and soon even the novice player will have a fast compact. Then it’s off to the shop to install and paint the car and add the points to the engine, gearbox, and tires. When you max out the 20 points, you can ticker around and place most of the points on the engine and gearbox while adding a few points to the tires so you wont spin out. The amount of looks is amazing. Each car has six things you can change once you buy them. They range from rims, hoods, fronts, spoilers and even the back end and the exhaust system. Then the fun part for those who want to be creative the paint shop every part of the car can be painted a different color. You will use a Hue guide to get the color, brightness and other effects. You can even look at the car from every angle and see how it looks before saving or adding decals, stripes and other cool items.

As you can see it’s loaded for a budget racer and I will admit there are some really cool cars out there online. You’re only limited to the money and the parts you unlock, however, after buying everything you can build up to 10 cars in each of the four classes. Then see if you’re the type that wants to go for the fastest lap record or get the win by wrecking the other guy’s car and watching it blow up!

Control / Playability

Eidos and Climax made the controls very simple. Triggers are the brake and gas while the “A” button is you nitro and the “B” button is your handbrake. The left trigger is used to steer with and to adjust the cars angle while going over the wild jumps. Of course holding in the left trigger can reverse you out of a wall or help you get turned back on track after being smacked around a few times. It may seem simple however; the great part is the fact the game moves at an amazing pace.

Xbox Live

This is the only game around that allows for 16 real cars (not wire-frame models) to
race at one time. The lobby is simple to set up and you can allow for friends only or open it up to anyone. They were smart enough to add a mute button and the best feature, the kick feature. The only real pain is you can race with friends or anyone and the AI will fill in the open spots. However, when you want to change to another mode, you do have to shut down the room and make a new one. Hey for the price and features this is one small draw back I did not mind at all.

You can even set the AI level to any percentage you want. To be honest though it seems the AI on both your team and the other team has a real mind for taking out anyone regardless of teams. At times there have been a few blow up starts. Let me explain. For some reason a person may get dropped and cause the car to just explode at the start of the race or event. It
happens in any game and there is no exception. The only real drawback is when the room has 16-players you will only hear those close by. If you are playing a team event, only those on your team will be able to hear you. Again, some nice features for the $20.00 you dropped on the game it also has some features that beat out the higher priced games.

Graphics / Presentation

I stated earlier in my opening that the games intro is amazing! It really is and I wish the whole game looked as good as that scene. At times the cars do suffer from some minor build glitches. Off line the game has a smooth frame rate and online it’s pretty good. If you have a person join with a crappy connection, lag ruins the game and it begins to look bad. However, it’s easy to tell who the person is and asking them to leave and reset fixes this. The explosions are great as well as the little things they add to each course. I am not going to snow any of the readers and say the game is perfect in this area. I will say for a budget game. It has some decent graphics and I
dare you to find any 2 cars that look the same.

Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot

Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot

Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot Crash 'n' Burn Screenshot

View all Crash ‘n’ Burn Screenshots in the Gallery

Audio

You will hear explosions and nitro being used. The other effects all sound very realistic and the announcer gets into the action and provides some great lines. Climax went for a mix of hard rock and metal for the music and no custom soundtrack option. I will admit that the choice of music gets you pumped for the action and soon you will be too busy racing to even care about the music at all.

Replay Value

For a budget game this one has plenty of replay value and the extra modes help it from becoming old. You may pop on for an hour one night and the next time play for hours. Throw in all the countless paint and decals and parts to change each car and really it is up to the gamer to decide how long to play. If they only had the single 16-man racing mode, I would not recommend this except for a rental.

Overall Score

Overall Score: 7.0/10 [not an average]

Additional Comments

Crash ‘N’ Burn shows that even a budget racer can be fun and provide gamers their fix for speed. While it has a few bugs, it also had potential with more effort thrown in to be something outstanding. I still find myself accepting invites to play for a few hours. It’s one of those little games that sort of shines, especially when played with the right group of friends or people. Hey for $20.00 bucks you won’t go wrong it offers a challenge earning all the parts and is a blast to play!

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