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The Return of the Boost Link

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

A filler game before Burnout 5 hits the next gen systems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: March 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Okay, so you read the title, this game is just that, filler. It has the graphics of Revenge and it plays like Takedown. But, NO CRASH MODE!! That's right, its gone in this one. So is traffic checking. Now, like in Takedown, hitting a car from behind is a wreck not a car that shoots ahead of you like a pinball.

The control is nice, the graphics are nice, but it just feels lacking, like they threw it together to keep the hype for 5 alive. Also, the decent soundtracks from the last two are gone. This time, we get a mix of new and old songs, Jane's Addiction? Come on!! Oh, did I mention, FIVE songs are from Guitar Hero? What's up with that? Come on EA, give us some original tracks. Also, the non-guitar hero tracks range from Avril Lavigne singing in Spanish (Yeah, that's right Spanish) to some electronic nonsense. This soundtrack should have been left off completely, nothing great here.

It also has a new mode called Maniac, where you score points by driving aggressively, hmm, just like every other Burnout, I dunno. And Burnouts are back!! Woo!!! When you get your boost bar full and it turns blue, burn that sucker until you are out and you will get a Burnout and your bar will shoot back up!! Pretty cool, you can chain together a bunch of these and really fly.

Overall, its a good racing game, but it just isn't a finished product. Don't believe the hype, if you want something fun to play for a few weeks, then buy it, otherwise rent it or wait for Burnout 5 on the 360 or PS3.

A filler game yes, but an enjoyable one at that

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: March 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It's inevitable that EA is tweaking the next generation of their incredibly fun Burnout series for next-gen consoles, so in between that time they give us Burnout Dominator. Combining events and features from Burnout 2, Burnout 3: The Takedown, and Burnout Revenge; Dominator delivers what longtime fans of the franchise would come to expect. Maintaining a great sense of speed and focusing a bit more on tactical elements this time around, Dominator is a fun blast while it lasts, but it doesn't have that meat & potatoes feel to it that the previous games in the series have had. Not to mention that it becomes noticable where the game was scaled back while being developed, and graphically the PS2 is really showing it's age. The cars look blockier than ever before, and the tearing is ever apparent on a regular television when going at high speeds. The Maniac Race mode is fun, and while this may be a filler game, some other new features would have been nice, especially considering the game isn't carrying a real budget price. Dominator can essentially be considered "Burnout Remix", and a cheaper price would have been nice for what you get here. That aside, Burnout Dominator is still a blast to play, and features much of what has made the series so great in the first place. This may very well be the last great racer for the PS2, and with Burnout 5 over the distant horizon, Dominator proves to be a very worthy distraction.

I waited 18 months for this????

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 14
Date: March 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Before I played this game two days ago (the ONLY time I will ever play this game), I considered myself a huge Burnout fan. I thought Takedown was amazing, and Revenge added some cool new things like Traffic Attack and multi-tiered Crash mode stages that made it even more exciting. I had high expectations of Dominator, and I gladly paid my money for it. After playing it for roughly half an hour, feeling bored for most of that time, I gave up and listed it for resale.

Other reviewers like Gamespot and Amazon customers have referred to this game as "Burnout Remix." The word "remix" brings to mind including the best of the best from a given set of ideas. Instead, I found dull events and a complete absence of the real innovations evident in Burnouts 3 and 4. My girlfriend and I loved Crash mode for the challenge and variety it added to the racing roster. I loved Traffic mode in Revenge for its all-out carnage. Why, then, would these events be removed from a "remix" game that's supposed to be worth playing? Instead, these alternatives to racing are replaced with events like a drift-based event, where you score points by chaining Burnouts and drifting around corners BY YOURSELF. Then there's Maniac Mode, where all you do is drive really fast and recklessly, again, BY YOURSELF. Aren't these two "events" parts of Burnout as a whole and not individual events? I felt cheated that the Burnout team thought this kind of bland filler would actually work, especially at the expense of events that actually had more of an objective.

Like I said before, I was a big Burnout fan until two days ago. Just 30 minutes with Dominator wiped out the excitement I got from 40+ hours between Takedown and Revenge. Sure, the "real" Burnout 5 is on the horizon, but this is one gamer who will never know whether it's worth playing.

Worst Burnout in History!!!!!!!!!! /:(

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: April 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When i heard that there would be a fifth installment to the Burnout series, i thought awesome! A new Burnout game! But it turned out to be a rip-off! No crash mode! No Traffic checking! No good music! And although the return of doing burnouts is cool, you can't advance your boost bar like 3x unlike burnout 3 or burnout 4 revenge. Don't waste your money on this burnout! It sucks!

Huge disappointment, not worth $40

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: June 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As other reviewers here have noted, this is more akin to "Burnout Lite" than a real Burnout game. I don't know what EA was thinking to release a Burnout game without the Crash Mode, but that's what they did, and it's not worth the $40 price. If you're skeptical, rent it first...I think you'll conclude that this is the weakest of the sequels. Note also that the game does NOT support old analog wheels or PS1 controllers...another really bad decision by EA. Supposedly, they're making the "real" Burnout 5 for the PS3. But given this sorry ripoff, it won't be a reason for me to spend my money on a new console.

cars are hard to see far away ?? even with big sceen tv?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

the game is funnier , but the graphics are messy , you use to be able to see the cars ahead of time in the distance, now its not as fun as the other three games, also you get stuck on dead ends this is do to its messy graphics, basically you fell like you need glasses threw the whole game.

Fast paced game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really love this game. It suits the PSP very well as it can be played in little chuncks instead of one long sit through.

Graphics are really good for PSP standards. Gameplay is fun.

CRASHING, EXPLOSIONS, AWESOME 8.5 OUT OF 10

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Though this game is not as good as Burnout Revenge, it's still a lot of fun to play even if it is missing some things like online play and crash mode. Still it's a fun tide-over till until Burnout Paradise hits the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The crashes are still great to watch, and this time when you crash you can blow up your car to take out an opponent or to just raise hell among the commuters by destroying a lot of things. The soundtrack is still solid even if there are some songs that don't belong(Why is the girlfriend song from Avril Lavigne on here?). Burnout has always been the leader in car destruction, and this game proves to be no different, and still stands above pale imitators(Ahem, Full Auto, I'm looking at you). Crashing cars never really gets old if done right and this is a prime example of how it'll never gets old.

Prepare to Dominate!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

You gotta love Burnout. The first Burnout was a run chase-style racing game, the second a crash puzzle game that even had a mode where you could chase down speeds as law enforcement or run from it, the third a game about taking out the competition any which way you can. The fourth... let's not talk about the fourth... and now at last the fifth game in the series proper, a Playstation 2 exclusive about getting back to the roots and getting rid of the uh...gunk that muddied up Burnout: Revenge.

So for better or worse this is a very different experience. First of all, crash mode is gone. Yeah, yeah, cry me a river. If you want crash mode go play Burnout 2, 3 or (ugh!) 4. Secondly, some modes using different driving techniques are in. There's Drift Mode where you power slide as much as possible, Near Miss where you try to almost hit as many cars as possible. There's modes where you try to keep Burnout going as long as possible and drive as crazy as possible. And of course there are the requisite races, eliminations, and the oh-so-wonderful Road Rage where you take out as many as possible. You don't have a hub world or a map for event selection, instead selecting events from different series and unlocking more events as you go like in Forza, unlocking new cars along the way.

"But..." you may say "I've already played all those other Burnout games. Why should I play this one?" Ahh.... but the main reason surely to play this game is simple: it has some very nice variety in the tracks which allows for some very exciting races and takedowns. You'll find yourself greatly enjoying racing through the Tuscan Hills trying to take out a car AND win the event, and perhaps like me you you'll get a real kick out of taking down your friends again and again.

The graphics are about as good as a Playstation 2 game gets. The music is better than previous games in the series (I like Avril's song Girlfriend, so sue me), the tracks are great fun, and the events are at least very different for the most part from the other Burnout games. If you just can't get enough Burnout, or find yourself longing for some more races and takedowns, you can't go wrong with Dominator for the price. Happy crashing!

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