You may not even be familiar with the title Burnout Crash! yet, but don’t fret, since the ESRB has just revealed the most details about it yet.
Typically, by the time the ESRB rates a game, we’ve already known about it for quite some time, and they more or less just confirm what mature content will be included, if any. Every once in a while they surprise us though, and publish a rating for a game no one knew existed. The Australian Classification Board actually beat them to the punch this time by revealing Burnout Crash!, but other than the PG rating assigned and the name of the game, not much else was learned. The only other tidbits to go on was that it’ll come to both Xbox 360 and PS3, and it’s published by Electronic Arts of course.
Thanks to the ESRB, we get a little more insight about the mysterious game, and three major details are revealed. The first is that the game will consist of a top down view, which is extremely unusual for the Burnout series. The next detail reveals it is an “action game,” where the main goal is to earn points by causing large pile up crashes. This should sound very familiar to anyone who’s played any previous Burnout title, since crashing has always been at the core of the series, usually with a special mode focusing on precisely what’s described here. This could also indicate that another traditional feature may not be included: racing. If true, it would make sense that the game is a downloadable title entirely focused on the crash mode of previous games. The final point of interest that the vehicles are described as “cartoony.” Whether this is an indication that the vehicles are merely unrealistic, or if it means that the graphical style has taken a major change in direction is up for speculation. Read the full report and judge for yourself:
This is an action game in which players earn points for creating traffic pileups. From a top-down perspective, players initiate crashes by driving ‘cartoony’ vehicles (e.g., cars, trucks, vans, buses) into busy intersections; multiple crashes trigger score multipliers and rack up large ‘bills’ of property damage. Each level is accompanied by crashing sounds, small explosions, and vocal encouragement (e.g., ‘Cool,’ ‘Maximum Carnage!’). In some levels, players are instructed to crash into police cars (e.g., ‘Crash them before they bust you!’); in other sequences, oversized airplanes, tornadoes, lobster monsters, and UFOs slide across the screen, destroying any vehicles in their path.
It would seem likely that we’d find out more about the upcoming game soon, but if it is in fact a downloadable title EA may choose to wait until the PSN is back online before revealing any official information. Whenever that happens, PlayStation LifeStyle will be there to let you know, and crash our cars immediately afterward. What do you think this slightly different approach to the Burnout franchise?
