It may have started out as just another post-Ridge Racer driving game with a unique focus on beautifully destructive car crashes, but over the years, the Burnout series has really carved out its own spot in the racing genre. Last year's Burnout 3: Takedown was when the series truly came into its own by achieving a near-perfect balance between high-speed racing and nefarious racing tactics designed to put the other racers out of commission. With a name like Burnout Revenge, you might expect the latest game in the series to be a little rougher, a little meaner. And you'd be right. While it isn't a total reinvention, Burnout Revenge makes significant alterations to the Burnout formula that essentially render every other game in the series obsolete.

The biggest changes in Burnout Revenge come in its track design and in the ability to slam into some nonracing traffic and plow right through it. Wrecking into innocent bystanders in automobiles is known as traffic checking, and it's limited to small and medium-sized cars that are stopped or traveling in the same direction as your vehicle. These cars, once hit by a racer, essentially become weapons. If you slam them just right, you can send them flying into the other lane, ideally slamming into another racer and taking him down immediately. But checked traffic will also fly behind you after being rear-ended, letting you create tricky flying obstacles for other racers to avoid. Having to keep track of which traffic you can and can't hit adds an interesting layer of complexity to the game, though the sometimes comical physics displayed by checked traffic--which flies around like you're wrecking into an aluminum can--looks a little weird. The whole concept also ties in to the new traffic attack event, which gives you money for each car you smash and ties its medals to specific dollar amounts.

The design of Burnout Revenge's tracks make an even bigger impact on the way the game feels, and they give you a lot to think about. Each of the game's tracks is now packed full of alternate routes, some of which serve as shortcuts. Some of them really just serve as ramps, letting you set up for tough but supremely satisfying vertical takedowns. Crashing down from above onto an opponent is one of the more thrilling moments the game has to offer. The increased complexity of the game's tracks also has an impact on your boost meter. Most of the routes don't have any traffic on them and don't count as oncoming lanes, meaning the only two ways to earn boost while on an alternate route are to slam into other racers or to drift. Since neither are guarantees, it's easy for some alternate routes to turn into longer paths than the main track. But for events like online road rage, where you might be trying to avoid detection, these routes make it much easier to hide. In the end, all roads lead back to the main path one way or another, so you're never separated from the action for too long.

All the game's modes and events are rolled up into a single-player world tour mode. Unlike last year's game, Revenge's world tour doesn't really take place on a world map. Instead, events are broken into 11 different ranks. Earning gold medals is a major goal, but you'll also have to earn stars to rise through the ranks. Stars are earned in every different type of event, and outside of crash mode, you get them from driving as aggressively as possible. Drifting, hitting other cars, taking out your rivals, driving in the wrong lane, and catching air are just some of the things that impact your star meter. Your task in each race is to finish with an "awesome" rating, which translates to four stars. Winning the event with a gold medal adds a star to your rating, taking you up to "perfect." Conversely, finishing with bronze subtracts a star. These stars are tallied up after each event, and they go into your rank. When you hit a certain star count, you go up to the next rank, giving you access to another set of races.

The world tour front end is more complicated than it needs to be. It starts out with one section for each rank. Each rank has a list of locations, and each location has a list of races. Sounds straightforward, right? But sometimes you'll unlock races in previous ranks while working up in a higher one, especially if you're focusing on crash events over race events, or vice versa. So you won't consistently move up to the higher ranks, as you'll constantly have to dig through the other ranks in search of events you haven't completed yet. Additionally, the game seems to run out of new tracks and crash environments about halfway through. You'll race every single type of race on every possible track, both forward and backward. After awhile, it starts to get a little repetitive, but with each new rank, you do uncover a few new twists.

Your choice of cars has also been made a little tougher. In Burnout 3, everything was spelled out for you right away. Each race fit into a class, and the most recent car you had in that class was usually the right one to use. Now, each car is rated in its top boost speed, its weight class (which tells you how likely it is to get pushed around the road by other cars, as well as how it handles around corners), and its crashbreaker force. When you unlock a new car, there's no guarantee it'll be your new best vehicle, so selecting a vehicle takes a little more thought than it probably needs to. More often than not, though, the right-most car on your list is the one you'll want to use for races. Speaking of cars, you can earn a couple of extra cars right off the bat by having saves for Burnout 3 and Madden NFL 06 on the same card or hard drive as your Burnout Revenge save. If you plan to get these cars, make sure you get the saves first, as adding the saves later won't give you the cars, and apparently they aren't unlockable by any other means.