advertisement

Burnout is back, and domination is the name of the game. Battle across all-new tracks tailor-made for every style of racing, including drifting and racing in the oncoming traffic lane. The crazier you drive, the more you'll max out your boost. Drain it completely and perform a burnout to get an instant boost recharge. Chain multiple burnouts and keep the adrenaline flowing! Maniac mode allows you to drive over the edge and watch your score skyrocket. Every track has shortcuts, so slam your enemies into the barriers and shave precious seconds off your time. Each car has unique qualities, and you'll need to master them all if you want to win the World Tour.

JIVE MAGAZINE RATING: 3 OUT OF 5

See All Screenshots

See Gameplay Videos

Product Features

EDITORIAL:

By  Bert Rinderle

To avoid any confusion: Burnout Dominator IS NOT Burnout 5. BO5 will be an all-new, open-world game coming to PS3 and X360 later in 2007.

So what is Dominator? Is it worth the purchase?

It's vitally important to know that Dominator, despite being a totally new game in the long-running vehicle-mayhem Burnout series, is meant to be a return to the roots of the series.

The quickest way to describe the gameplay would be a mixture of Burnout 2, Takedown, and Revenge. The core of the series has always been driving dangerously to fill a boost meter, which allows you to then go even faster.

Dominator maintains this core, but in a welcome return to Burnout 2, includes the joy of boost linking. Once your boost meter is full (and turns blue), hit the boost button and off you go. What you can now do is continue to traffic-weave, fly through oncoming traffic performing near misses and tail-gating, and smash your opponents into obstacles. Do this enough, and you'll be rewarded another full boost meter (Burnout x2, x3, x15, etc). Top drivers will be able to keep the boost chain going for the entire length of the track, and Dominator is built around trying to attain this.

There is NO traffic checking. If you hit ANY civilian traffic - oncoming or not - you're gonna wreck, although you're still be able to aftertouch and/or crashbreak your destroyed metal carcass.

The gameplay flow is very similar to Revenge: a world tour mode takes you through various tracks, unlocking progressively faster car classes and increasingly difficult challenges. There are medals to earn, secrets to find, and rankings to increase. Dominator has three major differences from Takedown and Revenge, however: no online play (but there is split-screen, which is better than nothing), no crash mode (disappointing, but supposedly it's being reinvented for Burnout 5), and Record Breaker, a new single-race mode which lets you race any unlocked car on any unlocked track, and also lets you choose which type of race you'd like to run (single, time attack, maniac, etc).

Maniac Mode is a new race type that scores you on how much havoc you cause, and it's a lot of fun. Also new is the Signature Shortcut: smash a rival into a certain place on a certain track, and the resulting impact unlocks a shortcut for permanent use on that track in any mode.

Dominator uses the same game engine as Revenge, but it doesn't look quite as sharp. The game moves very fast, and has good sound and perfect control. The track design is structured around long turns, perfect to drift through, and each has its own unique feel, from a beachside course to a winding mountain road. The loading times are a bit long compared to the PS3/X360.

Dominator is a breakneck ride through the careening, eye-burning experience that is Burnout, and although it's not one of the best games in the series, it's a great way for its run on the PS2 to end.