ZombieTron's blog

I know I am eagerly awaiting an announcement from Criterion Games, to hear a new Burnout is on its way!

However, I am also painfully aware that the series has not gone in the direction I would have wanted it to go in. And any announcement now will not please ALL BurnoutAholics.

There are now two very different types of Burner. The old skool Burner who thrives in closed track battle racing environments and the new comers who want to pull stunts and explore open worlds.

So where does the series go from here?

I was given Ridge Racer Unbounded as a birthday present, as my birthday was the same day as the Revenge server close down, I figured I should ask for a potential replacement.

I have tried it, but find it quite difficult and unforgiving. But, as it does have takedowns (frags) and big jumps, ways to earn power (or boost), and as it feels a bit Revengey in attitude, it could be a good game to play while we wait for news about a new Burnout title.

We did a bit of a twitter campaign to try to #SaveBurnoutRevenge. It obviously didn't work, and we didn't get any official responses from @CriterionGames, but we did get some positive support from a couple of guys who no longer work for Criterion, but did work on Burnout Revenge.

Here are the tweets:

@IainAngus: I worked on this game and will be very sorry to see it switched off.

@Fortress_Craft: That sucks, Why not release the server code and allow people to run it. We sweated blood on the network version of that game...

This may or may not be shown on Inside Xbox in the UK:

EA are closing the servers for Burnout Revenge on the 13th of April 2012.

Almost two years since we lost the ability to play Burnout 3: Takedown online with the close of Original Xbox Live, we are now losing its sequel.

Burnout Revenge is a unique experience on Xbox Live. No other racing game shares its adrenalin fuelled furiosity. No other game has anything like its crash mode. No other game has had me hooked for over 6 years.

Sadly we are unable to get to play this week, so are missing saying goodbye to Burnout Revenge.

I hope you are all still playing and making the most of your final chance to race around the Revenge world.

I know some people have tried Ridge Racer Unbounded, and I hope to try it soon too... I wish there was a demo as I'm not sure it is going to suit me.

Otherwise, I guess my race fix will be found on NFS: The Run, at least until something better comes along.

Let me know if you have any tips for arcade racers I may not have tried out!

A while back I did a little experiment with our forums and added a couple of forums for non-burnout games. 

They were not exactly a success.

In fact our whole forum section (if not the website, but lets not go there) has died a bit of a slow death.

So, I just want to get your input...

Should we keep the forums? Or should I ditch them altogether and just archive the posts we already have for posterity?

Or, should we soldier on and keep the forums, even though nobody ever really posts in them?

Should I ditch the non-burnout forums?

I've had a bit of a spring clean over on our links page. Quite a few Burnout community fansites have fallen at the wayside. Sadly, BurnoutCrash.com was one of them. They had some good crash junction guides, but oh well! 

I have added links to the IGN guides for Burnout Revenge and Burnout Paradise as they seem pretty decent. 

Many of the other forums and fan pages seem to be pretty dead, but I have kept the links there as the pages are still available, and lots of the older info might be useful.

I'm feeling a little guilty about not playing Revenge enough to justify the servers staying open. I wouldn't say I ever moved on from it, but I did try the new release arcade racing games to see if I could get into them. I did play Paradise for a while and most recently killed some hours on Burnout Crash!

In that time I would jump back to Burnout Revenge every now and then and that made me remember one of the reasons why I don't play it as much as I would like to.

Getting kicked sucks!