Pop Culture | Video Games | 00s
The Best Racing Game Mode Ever Is Back As Its Own Game
If you're a racing game fan, the Burnout series needs no introduction. Throughout the early 2000s, it was the go-to racing game for people who wanted sheer speed and destruction instead of blue shells and banana peels.
The best part of the whole franchise by far was the Crash Mode, where the entire goal was to ram your vehicle into ridiculous arrangements of cars and try to cause as much destruction as possible. This got you a score measured in how many millions of dollars of damage you caused, and it was impossible not to come back to it over and over to try to cause even bigger crashes than you did before.
Unfortunately there hasn't been a new Burnout game since Burnout Paradise in 2008, as developer Criterion Games has been tackling the Need For Speed series ever since. Thankfully, we now have Danger Zone to satisfy our need for vehicular violence.
Danger Zone (which is unfortunately not related at all to Top Gun, which seems like a missed opportunity given a sequel is apparently in the works) is developed by Three Fields Entertainment, a studio headed up by Criterion Games veterans Fiona Sperry and Alex Ward. The game is clearly a labor of love on their part, and the company's own website describes it as "crash for cash by creating the biggest car crash."
Everything you loved about Crash Mode is here. Crazy level designs? They're crazier than ever. Cash pickups and powerups in hard to reach places? You bet. Crashbreakers? They're Smashbreakers now, and they're as glorious (and as key to getting a good score) as they've always been. Best of all, it's all in shiny HD!
Burnout's Crash Mode was a staple of high school and college parties for years, and Danger Zone looks like it has every bit as much potential to be the same.
The game is now available for digital download on the PlayStation 4 and on PC for $12.99, which is a pretty small price to pay to relive some of your most fun and hilarious gaming memories from years ago. Happy crashing!