YMMV / Burnout

For YMMV tropes relating to Burnout Paradise, click here.

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• Awesome Music: Really, the entire soundtrack for each game counts - every player has their favourite song. Here are some examples:
  • Burnout 2: Point of Impact:
    • "Destroyer Mix"
    • "Panic Attack"
    • "The Miracle Mile"
    • The credits theme, a medley of three other tracks in the game.
  • Burnout 3: Takedown:
    • "Make A Sound" by Autopilot Off
    • "Lazy Generation" by The F-Ups
    • "Fall Apart" by 1208
    • "Paper Wings" by Rise Against
    • "I'm Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance
    • "Breathing" by Yellowcard
    • "Here I Am" by The Explosion^note (And Burnout 3: Takedown is one of three games to to have this song featured in them including Tony Hawks Underground 2 and the Cars tie-in game, albeit instrumental for the latter's case).
    • "C'mon" by Go Betty Go
    • "Saccharine Smile" by The Donots
    • "Shake That Bush Again" by The Mooney Suzuki
    • "I Wanna Be Sedated" by The Ramones
  • Burnout Revenge:
    • "Beast And The Harlot" (shown in-game as Beast...) by Avenged Sevenfold
    • "Flyover" by Asian Dub Foundation
    • "Today" by Junkie XL
    • "Do What You Want" by OK Go
    • The BT remix of "Break On Through" by The Doors
    • "Straight To Video (KMFDM Remix)" by Mindless Self Indulgence
    • "Shot Down" by Nine Black Alps
    • "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Remix)" by LCD Soundsystem
    • "Come On" by Andy Hunter
    • "Riot Radio" by The Dead 60s
    • "Hand of Blood" by Bullet for My Valentine
    • "Lullaby" by Thrice
    • "Lights and Sounds" by Yellowcard
    • "Life Burns!" by Apocalyptica featuring Lauri Ylonen
  • Burnout Dominator:
    • "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne
    • "My Curse" by Killswitch Engage
    • "Would?" by Alice in Chains
    • "Anthem (We Are The Fire)" by Trivium
    • "Rockstar (Jason Nevins Remix)" by N.E.R.D
    • "Collapse" by Saosin
  • Burnout CRASH!:
    • Penny Arcade at least has a disturbing reverence for Gloria Estefan's "Dr. Beat".
• Breather Level: The penultimate event in Takedown, a Grand Prix event in which you must use the US Circuit Racer (an IndyCar), is probably the most difficult event in the game owing to the US Circuit Racer being difficult to drive within the racing conditions that Burnout demands. The actual final event, another Grand Prix series that requires the use of the Euro Circuit Racer (a Le Mans Prototype), is much easier by comparison simply because your car is both heavier and more agile with also all the opponent using Domniator Super, while a very fast car, is inferior to yours.
• Camera Screw: Activating Impact Time in Burnout 3 wouldn't move away from the cinematic crash camera, often making it next to impossible to actually aim at oncoming racers to hit (this also affects Crash Mode, where trying to steer yourself towards pickups could be challenging depending on where the camera was placed). This was fixed in Burnout Revenge.
• Catharsis Factor: Part of the fun of the series is just wrecking the hell out of anything that moves on the road (haven't you always wanted to do Road Rage when you're feeling road rage?). And then there's the Crash Junctions mode, where you slam into an intersection and try to cause as much damage as possible in one go.
• Character Tiers: With the exception of Point of Impact, vehicles are sorted into various classes that determine how fast they are (with the exception of Crash/Heavyweights, which are intended for the Crash mode). Paradise lacks abject categories for cars, as all are instead classified by manufacturer, but most can be sorted this way based on which license they're unlocked in.
  • Burnout: Easy, Medium, Hard, Special
  • Takedown/Legends: Compact, Muscle, Coupe, Sports, Super, Special, Heavyweights
  • Revenge: ST, DX, GT, Special (Race) + Lite, Mid, HVY, Super (Crash)
  • Dominator: Classic, Factory, Tuned, Hotrod, Super, Race Specials, Dominator
  • Paradise: Learner's, Class D, Class C, Class B, Class A, Burnout, Burnout Elite
• Difficulty Spike: In Takedown, Revenge and Dominator, the player can unlock Special Events, where they must complete a Burning Lap in one of the fastest cars in the game (these events are unlocked as early as the first half-hour of play). Two particularly famous Special Events from Takedown involve using an F1 car on the longest track in Europe and the longest track in the game in the Far East, with lap times so stringent you can't get the Gold time if you crash even once.
• Even Better Sequel: Burnout 3: Takedown is considered to be this by many. Burnout 2 was a great game that featured on dangerous driving, but 3 emphasized it with the Takedown and Aftertouch mechanics, making the racing super tense and exciting, plus a noticeable bump in graphical quality while still maintaining a silky 60fps. No wonder that it's frequently hailed as one of the best racing games of its generation.
• First Installment Wins: Mostly averted regarding the original game. When Legends made an effort to mix the original two games into the third for handhelds, the only part of the first game that made it through was a single track, Twilight Harbour. It is also considered the least favourable game (second only to CRASH!), with most fans arguing over Takedown, Revenge or Paradise. However there is a niche that perfers the greater focus on straightforward racing over combat in the first two games.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The game series itself was one to Thrill Drive.
  • The FlatOut series, which feels a bit like Shoddy Knockoff Product due to its name, but it plays more like the Playstation classic Destruction Derby, with no cut-off cutscene if a destruction happened. Their distinguishing feature was "windshield cannons" — that is, if you get in a big crash, you go flying through the windshield. (Wear seatbelts, kids.) There were even mini games where you took advantage of this, throwing your hapless driver at giant bowling pins or trying to hit a target.
  • The Asphalt series, which combines the game's trademark boost and takedown gameplay mechanic with EA's sister series of ensemble real-life sports cars. Once the series hits 3D since the fourth game onwards, the gameplay resemblance became apparent.
  • The 2004 Crash'N'Burn, another British racing game with an emphasis on dangerous driving and spectacular crashes.
  • The MotorStorm games are basically Burnout but off-road!
  • Split/Second (2010) is Burnout meets a Michael Bay movie.
  • Burnout itself is Destruction Derby with intersections and traffic instead of demolition derbies.
  • Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is basically Burnout with licensed cars and a major emphasis on police chases. Justified, as it was developed by Criterion. Taken a step further with Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012), which is Burnout Paradise with licensed cars (including a singular DLC-expanded part of the map!).
  • Driver: San Francisco incorporates a near-copy of Burnout's boosting system, event types, and event selection, worked into more standard Driver-style gameplay and missions. (It was also the first well-received Driver game in years, as they seem to have moved on from unsuccessfully trying to emulate the GTA series.)
  • While Criterion Games abandoned the racing genre until 2020 to aid other EA studios for the Star Wars games, the game's creators are still not done with Burnout. Now they were migrated, along with some of the Criterion staff (technically following the leaders) to their own studio named Three Fields Entertainment and made three games that have a Burnout influence:
    • Dangerous Golf is Burnout's Crash mode but creating a giant mess using a golf ball.
    • Danger Zone is a Spiritual Successor to Burnout 3's Crash mode.
    • Dangerous Driving is a Spiritual Successor to the pre-Paradise games. A sequel that's in development will be a Spiritual Successor to Paradise itself.
• Game-Breaker: The Supercar (Saleen S7/McLaren F1-Expy)in Burnout 2. Nothing save the Custom Roadster could touch it, and it wasn't easy thanks to the Roadster's awful handling.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Takedown has a surprisingly strong following in Japan, which is saying a lot compared to the lackluster Japanese reception to the prequels. A lot of the popularity appears to be centered around the soundtrack, and Crash FM, along with Stryker, received a full dubbing treatment, including Japanese versions of the EA Games website promos that would occasionally air during races.
• Goddamned Bats: Or to be specific, it's "Goddamned Traffic":
  • Especially in the very first game thanks to the cross traffic blocking off entire streets.
  • Any traffic opposite you on a hill or inconvenient intersections.
• Growing the Beard: The first game is generally regarded as competent but forgettable. The second game is agreed to be better, but Takedown is usually pointed to as the game where the series found its feet.
• Memetic Mutation: "Girfriend" by Avril Lavigne being included in Dominator for four times in four different languages has been memed to hell and back by the community as the common response of Dominator's questionably sparse music tracks lineup. The fact that there's initially eight different language versions (including the ones already included in the final release) already pre-recorded for the game only for the other four to be scrapped later due to hardware limitations only further seals the deal.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The sound of the medals being awarded to you in 3 and Revenge made it feel more rewarding. Can double as a Moment of Awesome if the medal is awarded during a takedown or a split-second finish.
  • The *DOOM!* that's made when your boost bar is increased. You know you're ready to whoop asses when that happens.
  • In 3, the "DING!" sound that plays when you hit a racer with Aftertouch. Or just take them down in general, really.
  • In Revenge, the sound of boosting, which literally puts in the sound of a jet aircraft whooshing by.
  • The backdraft sound effect when you activate Aftertouch Crashbreakers as everything slows to a near-stop, especially when you know you're gonna take down several opponents in the impending blast.
  • Shunting an opponent off-screen and hearing the sound of their car crunching onto the wall. String it all together, and you get this glorious audio sequence:
    *THWOOM*, *BASH*... *crunch* *DING*... *DOOM!* ^note Translated: Boost, Shunt, Crash, Takedown confirmed, Boost extended
• Nightmare Fuel: The beta version of Burnout 3: Takedown featured horrifying sound effect tracks for Impact Time which wouldn't be out of place in Silent Hill or Postal and might even bring back memories of the menu theme from Destruction Derby 2 for the PS1. Thankfully the Impact Time themes were massively toned down in the retail version in order to fit the game's Lighter and Softer tone and feel like the time casually slowing down while the player gets Aftertouch Takedowns after crashing, but some, like the one where a woman screams horrifically and heart-beating noises, can still be pretty chilling. Also, the retail versions of the said tracks are no slouch either.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Those who stick to the more famous EA-backed titles might be surprised to learn just how far back the lineage goes. Crash mode originates in the second game, the Stephen Root tracks in Paradise actually come from the first three games, and some cars date back all the way to the original Burnout. Tracks across Europe and the USA, Face Offs and Championships, and tracks that can be combined into one big track also date back as far as the first title.
  • Paradise's Stunt Run mode works very similarly to Dominator's Maniac Mode a year earlier. Both involve gaining points by drifting, oncoming, near-misses and airtime, and include ways to multiply your current combo (Burnouts in Dominator, Barrel Rolls and Billboards in Paradise).
  • Similarly, the idea of getting points for your dangerous driving originated from the first two games, but it took until Dominator and Paradise to base events around them.
• Polished Port: The Xbox 360 port of Revenge. It has better graphics than the original Xbox version (particularly adding paint chipping effects to the cars), obviously, but it also improves the loading times, has more songs on the soundtrack, and it greatly improved Crash Mode by refining two things: 1) Making it effortless to get a boost start, and 2) If you restart, the camera flying back to the start is much faster, whereas it was slooooooow in the Xbox and PS2 versions. There are also more Crash Zones to plow through here.
• Porting Disaster: While the PSP version of Burnout Legends is a solid game, the same cannot be said for the DS version. The graphics are muddy and pixelated, the driving physics lack any sense of speed or responsiveness, the sound effects are ear-grating, and the excellent licensed soundtrack has been nixed in favor of generic instrumental heavy metal.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Somehow, the last two Burnout games are titled from the game's theme song. Paradise has the fitting "Paradise City", while CRASH! has The Primitives' "Crash", which also names this game's location.
• Retroactive Recognition: For a song in this case; years before featuring as the OP for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, "This Fire" by Franz Ferdinand was prominently featured in the soundtrack for Takedown.
• The Scrappy: Stryker and DJ Atomika.
  • The latter's performance in Burnout Paradise could be considered a let down compared to his previous work in SSX 3, but it could also be considered an improvement compared to Stryker's performance in Takedown. Depending on how one feels about Stryker, one could wonder how he could be a real DJ and not some guy in a recording booth playing a character.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The "Collector" feature of Legends. You unlock one "Collector" car in each class as you play through the World Tour mode but there are five total in each class. To get the other four, you need to race players who have a car you want. This would have been difficult in the best of times (as there are 25 total Collector cars and you have to earn 20 of them through ad-hoc play) and has only diminished as people moved on from the game. Gotta Catch 'Em All mechanics that require other players really only work if a game is a Killer App for a platform.
• Song Association: Seems to be a theme with games made by EA. Of particular note is the Real Song Theme Tune in Paradise, which can be guessed just by looking at the name of the game and the city.
• Sequel Displacement: Burnout 3 is a major example, given that it took the series from "well-received and with a dedicated following" to "Critically acclaimed smash-hit"
• Sequelitis: Although Burnout CRASH! is only a spinoff, it's pretty much widely hated by everyone due to its gameplay, which shares nothing in common with the main series Crash Mode besides the basic game idea, the Denser and Wackier tone, and the Totally Radical announcer.
• That One Achievement: The Signature Takedowns in Takedown and Revenge (as well as Signature Shortcuts in Dominator), which range from easy to unforgivably hard. Of note is 'Grapes of Wrath' and 'Tuk-Down', which require you to hit extremely small moving targets (wine vans and tuk-tuks respectively). 'Truck Torpedo' is also this, as trucks are the least common vehicle in the USA, and even when one does appear it may not even be carrying a speedboat.
  • Takedown Targets are also worth noting, with some being incredibly unreasonable. It's hard enough getting one Tram Takedown, but two in the same race?!
• That One Level:
  • Any "Burning Lap". While some are fairly generous in their constraints, others demand near perfection from the player. Which is asking a lot given all the random mayhem in the series' pedigree. In worst cases being less about skill or track-knowledge, and more about not getting blind-spotted on a hill or intersection while driving a Fragile Speedster. Fortunately, if you screw up on a Burning Lap and have to start over, the traffic patterns will be the exact same, so patient players can win gold via trial-and-error.
  • "Face Off" can be this too; with some rather insane rubber-banding for the later cars. It doesn't help that there are no other racers to build easy boost off of if you fall behind.
  • The Sports Series' Road Rage challenges from Takedown and Legends are incredibly difficult to get a gold medal for, without even critically damaging your cars due to their underwhelming Takedown ability, making you get silver or bronze medals when the event is over. It doesn't help that opponents sometimes fail to spawn ahead of you, forcing you to let those left behind catch up to you, wasting several precious seconds of time.
  • Downtown from Legends and Takedown is an absolute nightmare to go through. The true challenge comes from the section that's beneath the L-train tracks, where, aside from dealing with constant traffic, you will also have to mind a whole shitload of pillars which are strewn right across the edges and seemingly at random positions, ensuring you will crash at least once, with or without other racers pushing you into an obstacle. Going nitro in this section is essentially suicidal, especially on Road Rage where the game ends prematurely if you hit the bump too many times.
  • "Tuscan Hills" from Dominator is tricky to navigate through because of certain obstacles being obscured with harmless props or otherwise placed in a way you are almost guaranteed to crash into if your car spins out due to entering Burnout mode.
  • "Paradise Peril", a Crash Mode level from Legends and Takedown is incredibly diffcult to win gold on because of tricky congestion and vehicles giving low amount of cash upon being wrecked. Collecting all money pickups is near mandatory for getting anywhere close to the highest milestone, even though the cash tokens are all placed far away from each other.
  • "Drive Angry" is challenging on its own in Takedown, but Legends makes it a migraine due to lacking score multiplier power ups; the gold medal milestone is so absurdly high there is only one plausible way to achieve it, namely by activating boost start (good luck getting to learn about such though) and praying you will be able to amass enough cash to pass the requirement.
  • In Dominator we have Maniac events. The goal requires you to hold the boost while supercharged (which is a new feature to the series and requires the boost to be filled up) and drive dangerously to chain multipliers in order to get more points. Later Maniac events requires you to chain multipliers without any single crash or chances to get gold are gone. This can be a serious problem when it comes to congested traffic so prepare to restart dozens and dozens of times at the point of breaking your controller by frustration.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Nearly every game after Burnout 2 has this in some way for a portion of the fanbase (special mention to Paradise, more on its page):
  • Purists of Burnout 2 stick their nose up to the Crash mode in Takedown and Revenge, which put emphasis on pickups and blowing up your car (in addition to Aftertouch), rather than the purity of the original in 2.
  • Takedown gets this just for having a licensed soundtrack compared to the unique compositions in the first two games.
    • Some also criticize the new boost mechanics which remove the titular "burnouts" and for the first time let you boost with any amount of it as opposed to filling up your bar completely.
  • Revenge for being Darker and Edgier, in addition to much wider tracks, harder Takedowns and Traffic Checking making same-way traffic a complete joke.
    • Said "Traffic Checking" is also sometimes accused of overcomplicating Crash mode. Making it not just a matter of where you crash yourself, but how well you launch other cars.
  • Dominator for removing the Crash Mode and otherwise not being made by Criterion Games.
  • And of course, Burnout CRASH!, the downloadable game released in Fall 2011. Top-down viewing angle, no racing gameplay (the game is basically an expansion of Crash Mode), and cartoonish oddities like UFOs really set the fanbase into a fervor of contempt when it was announced.