Generation 4: Revenge

Burnout Revenge

The fourth generation of Burnout saw the light of day on the 13th of September 2005 in the US and 23rd of September 2005 in Europe with the release of Burnout Revenge. This generation is the refinement of generation 3, and was generally geared towards getting revenge on the rivals that have taken you down. Burnout Revenge gave us BurnoutAholics the tools to seek revenge from our rivals, both in single and multiplayer modes.

Gameplay changes compared to Generation 3 baseline

• The concepts of Revenge and Payback are introduced to the series
• Eliminator mode is changed from a lap-based event to a timer-based event (last place is now eliminated on a 30-second timer)
• Road Rage mode is now timer-based (you start out with a measure of time and have to score a given number of takedowns to increase your time)
• Preview Laps now give you the chance to test out not-yet unlocked cars on new tracks in Burning Laps
• Traffic Checking is introduced to the game – burnoutaholics can now plow straight through same-direction traffic without crashing
• Traffic Attack mode is introduced – timer-based event in which you have to check as much traffic as you can to gain Burnout Points, Time increases at certain point intervals, reach pre-set goals for medals
• Gameplay difficulty reduced
• Race, Road Rage and Eliminator modes now come in special Crashbreaker modes, where the Crashbreaker feature from earlier Crash Junctions can be used while in Impact Time – generally used to get Instant Payback or Instant Revenge on rivals, this is directly tied to the amount of boost left in your Boost bar when you crash – if nothing left; no crashbreaker, otherwise the more boost, the bigger the explosion
• Event Rating is introduced to the series – your event is rated according to how aggressive you drive, from OK to Good to Great to Awesome, this is combined with your medal at the end of the event – Bronze medal decreases the Event Rating one level, Silver medal keeps it at status quo and Gold medal increases it one level – if you get both Awesome and Gold medal, the Event Rating will be increased to Perfect which is the best rating you can get
• The World Tour is now split into 11 ranks: Harmless, Unsafe, Reckless, Offensive, Fearless, Dangerous, Insane, Maniac, Assassin, Dominator and Elite – to level up from one rank to the next requires a number of stars, completing events awards stars depending on the Event Rating: OK awards 1 star, Good awards 2 stars, Great awards 3 stars, Awesome awards 4 stars and Perfect awards 5 stars
• Crash Junctions have now been integrated as a part of the World Tour, instead of being a stand-alone voluntary event
• Crash pickups have been removed completely
• Crash Junctions now have to be started by skillfully revving the engine just right to a launch meter to get a perfect start
• Crash Junctions now have a special target car which you will get lots of points if you damage it in the crash
• Each bit of damage being inflicted on any car in a Crash Junction will add to your Boost bar, which will be used for Crashbreaker explosions when the bar is full – it can also be filled up several times during a crash enabling the Crashbreaker to fire more than once in a crash scene
• The Crashbreaker now fires automatically 5 seconds after the Boost bar is full in a Crash Junction – you have to quickly tap the Crashbreaker button during the 5 second countdown to attempt to create as big an explosion as you can
• The tracks in Burnout Revenge again have shortcuts and alternate routes
• The cars are no longer classified in series
• The Crash Nav menu system has been replaced with a rank-ordered menu system for the World Tour
• Introduces the ELO system for online ranking

Burnout Revenge 360

A side-step of the fourth generation was the Xbox 360 release of Burnout Revenge. This is not the same game we know as Burnout Revenge for the other platforms as several major changes have been introduced. All of this occurred on the 7th of March 2006 in the US, 17th of March 2006 in Europe and the 23rd of March 2006 in Japan. Sadly (but understandably) this game is not backwards-compatible with the original Burnout Revenge, so you can’t play together on Xbox Live with different versions of Burnout Revenge. Burnout Revenge 360 is considered the baseline for gameplay features for the fourth generation of Burnout games because most BurnoutAholics have migrated to this version of the game and prefers this to the original Burnout Revenge. The 360 version contains a number of bugfixes and small changes in addition to several gameplay changes.

Gameplay changes compared to Burnout Revenge

• The Launch meter has been removed from Crash Junctions
• All cars are now unlocked for online play even if they haven’t been unlocked in offline mode
• Burnout Clips introduced – BurnoutAholics can now save 30 second clips of any offline event played and can share these clips through Xbox Live
• Online Revenge Rivals introduced – The system now keeps track of the number of times a player has been taken out by or has taken out any given player. This number is reset every time the score is settled. Settling the score means that you take down someone that has takedowns on you. The number of times you have settled the score with a player sometimes is displayed before a race is started. When you have settled the score more than 100 times with the same player he or she will become your nemesis
• Downloadable content has been added to the game (in the form of 7 downloadable cars)

Next page: Generation 5: Domination