Burnout Legends (DS)

Overall the game is a legend on the Nintendo DS!

Burnout started life as a promising street racer in the PS2's early days, with it's sickeningly realistic crashes and unrivalled sense of speed, it quickly became a classic, especially with the fantastic Burnout 2 and it's crash junctions. Burnout 3 caused mixed feelings, and generally the takedowns proved a brilliant new feature, but EA started poking their noses in with EA 'Trax' and their quickly repetitive loading screen messages. Then the next Burnout introduced nothing hugely new, and it just brought in more EA influences. But even so, the series remains one of the best rated racers in recent times, and it made a cracking show on the PSP. But then came the DS version...

The screenshots look fantastic; true 3D, decent car models and such, but once you see it moving it's ugly. The tracks have virtually no traffic at all. The sense of speed is pathetic, and the collision detection is the worst example I have ever seen in 20 years of gaming. Takedowns are literally 2 cars sort of rubbing/half merging when suddenly one car flips off the track and you jerk awkwardly to where that car was. It's laughingly bad. You can perfectly square a rival up against a barrier and absolutely slam him, but you will go right through him, tangle with him a bit then end up crashing yourself. You will also realise you were about a full car length away from the side too. But in Legends on the DS invisible walls are everywhere. It's very rare that you will actually get as far as a roadside barrier. You will notice what traffic there is you will have to stay well clear of, as even if you seem to be a perfectly safe distance you will wind up hitting it. It's idiotic.

The gameplay is no better and the handling is awful - twitchy and sluggish, and power-sliding is an almost impossibility. The difference between the cars is hard to notice, and also pointless when they're all so bad.

The game's not all bad however, but it's bad points just make it unplayable, which is a shame because it's initially impressive seeing the tracks shrunken on the DS, and still being recognisable and the game is all there; all the races, crash junctions and unlockables are all present. It's just so boring and frustrating to play through it all. It does have a multiplayer, which even supports single cart (although with only one track and no traffic), but it can't save a game that's so flawed in even the most basic areas.

Rather than being a lazily made game (which it could well be), it's probably more of a point that it was a bad idea. Burnout started on the PS2, so the PSP is ideal for a port, but with the DS only having the power of an N64, Burnout is something which is maybe too much for it. But then again, it's not what the DS was even meant for. The DS's lack of power is compensated by the touch screen and the games designed around it. Burnout is a game that requires something the DS doesn't have, which is hordes of processing power. Legends was doomed the second they thought it might have worked on the DS.

I urge you, no matter how brilliant the other games in the Burnout series are, this is nothing like them at all. So please resist the temptation that the Burnout name might make it sound good. It's truly one of the most awful games I have played in a long time.