That is until now.
Many popular game series have one entry that pales in comparison to the rest; Mario had Super Mario Bros. 2, Sonic had the Master System version of Sonic 2, Dante was in Devil May Cry 2, Snake was in Snake’s Revenge – I could go on all day (Oh, controversy! Sounds like a good idea for a feature. – Ed). In many of the aforementioned cases, the game was just a step back for the franchise – they all went on to recover. Burnout Legends for the Nintendo DS, however, is not just a step back; it’s more like a giant leap off the ledge of a tall building.
To be fair, this is the first Burnout title not developed by Criterion Games, which would normally make the origins of the diminished quality of the title fairly easy to determine, but this isn’t the case. Visual Impact took on the sizeable task of cutting Burnout down to a handheld form – they might not be a well known studio, but they have accomplished some fairly impressive feats on the Game Boy Advance, including 3D texture maps. Porting Burnout Legends down to the Nintendo DS appears to have been too much for them – while some of the game’s elements are there, it just lacks the Burnout feel. In fact, it doesn’t even feel remotely close to being a Burnout game.
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It's as exciting as it looks.
It’s difficult to put into words just how much of an abomination Burnout Legends actually is. The entire time one plays Burnout Legends is likely to be spent thinking just how the developer managed to get the game so wrong. Quite possibly the finest point of previous Burnout titles was the fantastic sense of speed that one derived from turboing their way through oncoming traffic. Burnout Legends lacks both of these things – the sense of speed and the traffic; the traffic is so sparse that you’d think that you’ve stumbled onto the set of a Mad Max film, while the cars give a speed sensation not unlike underpowered versions of those scooters that old people ride around on.
One of the most confusing things Burnout Legends is how the developer managed to make the game no fun to play. It’s pretty obvious that Visual Impact put the technical aspects of the Burnout Legends first, but it really feels like nobody cared how the game played. The handling of the cars feels off – bad enough on its own, but you have to add in the fact that the collision detection is completely messed up; in a game that depends so much on collisions between objects, you’d think that it would be key. You can rear-end an opposing car, and have him fly off (some sort of bizarre moon physics at play), whereas clipping an oncoming car will sometimes do absolutely nothing.
The DS version of Burnout Legends does happen to include all of the events and crash modes that graced the PSP version of the game, so there’s a lot of game in there (pity that it’s very bad and very slow). The racing sections of the game do have an iota of playability in them, but it’s the crash mode that is the most offensive to existing Burnout fans. Crash mode in the previous Burnout titles was all about causing large scale auto accidents and racking up that insurance bill. Not so in the DS version of Burnout Legends; in fact, you’d be lucky to cause more than 3 cars to crash for a bill of $20,000. It really doesn’t help that the crash effects are totally underwhelming either, due to massive scaling back of the game’s physics engines, and the sacrifices made to the game’s graphical engine.
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Crashed and burned, like the developer did
Despite the reputation Burnout has for being a demonstration of the true power of Renderware, Burnout Legends is anything but a graphical powerhouse. The game can look okay at certain times (mainly at full speed), but textures are unbelievably blurry when viewed closely, and the high degree of pop-in is nausea-inducing. The developer has chosen to use rather ugly looking wallpaper for the background, and that often clashes with the buildings that fade in during the race, making the game look uglier than it actually is. The car models are really bad – Destruction Derby had better looking cars in 1995 – with more detail! Seeing the crash effects in Burnout Legends is enough for a fan of the series to break down in tears; they’re almost non-existent. EA hasn’t bothered to extend their EA Trax music program to the DS; normally this would be a good thing, as we’ve had enough emo-rock for a lifetime – unfortunately, Burnout Legends’ music is like an intellectually-challenged child banging a guitar against a cheap keyboard. The racing and crashing sound effects are far too weak to be effective, even on a handheld.
The prospect of a Burnout game on the Nintendo DS was quite attractive to many of the handheld’s dedicated fans, but to release something this abysmal is just cruel. Rather than trying to port a superior game down to the DS, EA should have committed some resources to producing a Burnout title from the ground up for the DS. There would have to be a few liberties taken, but it couldn’t possibly turn out any worse than Legends has. The developer appears to have tried to port a game down to a system that couldn’t possibly handle it, and sacrificed gameplay for technical prowess, which directly goes against what Nintendo has been trying to achieve with the DS. Burnout fans will sleep better at night by pretending this abomination doesn’t exist.
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