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Burnout and Crash in head-on collision
Who said ECTS was boring? Two of the biggest driving games companies publicly revved up their engines to prove who could handle the most damage.
Once upon a time it was about frame-rates, scenery pop-up and licensed vehicles. Now it’s about who can trash their cars in the most outrageous fashion. Just before last week’s ECTS we showed first pictures of Rage’s destruction-heavy new Xbox driving game, Crash. Comparisons with Criterion’s vehicle-destroying Burnout sprang to mind. And not just to ours. At the show, the Rage boys had something to say on the matter too. In fact, we’d call it an outright challenge.
"I haven’t seen anything that can match our game," said Crash producer, Steve Pritchard as we got a hands-on feel of trashing cars left, right and centre. "We’ve had people saying their damage system on the car is great. Theirs is the best. We’ve said nothing because we’re developers and we know what we’re going to do. We’ve got 10,000 polygons (per car) which we can mangle, twist and deform. Everything hangs off, falls off, breaks off. We’re not afraid to go up against any other game."
And that, it seems, includes Burnout. "As far as I can tell with Burnout," he continued, "it’ll take a model – say your wing has been hit – and replace it with a damaged wing. But you can’t really tell. We’re taking the actual model and then… crunch! I’m quite confident we can beat anything else!"
Bold words indeed. So, like the sh*t-stirring little tossers we are, we pedalled our Smart Cars over to the Criterion stand to gauge the opinion of Burnout creative manager, Alex Ward. "Is Crash any good? It looks like Destruction Derby," he responded before being told of Rage’s claims of having superior pile-ups.
"Maybe they have. It’s Xbox right? The version of Burnout we’re showing hasn’t got the damage on. Ours is not a heavy physics-based game, it’s an arcade game. Look at Outrun, some of the best car crashes ever, the way the car flips." If Rage have got all sorts of cool deformation in there it’ll be brilliant. I just hope the game is as good."
C’mon, give us a fight!
"I think they’ve got ten cars on-screen like Gran Turismo, " continued Alex, shifting up a gear. "You can have a lot more polygons if you’ve got fewer cars. We haven’t, we’re tracking 305 cars on the course at any one time. It peaks at 13 million (polygons per second) and locks at sixty frames. So we’re throwing around a lot of poly power."
It was at this point Criterion challenged Rage to a race at the lights. "If they’ve got all that on the Xbox and Xbox is easier to develop for, let’s see what we can do if we ever develop on Xbox. Let’s see what they can do on PS2 and then we’ll compare them."
Excellent! Everyone likes a two-car race. Of course, in our bid to twist this story into something meatier, we have conveniently omitted Rage’s comments on how they’re pensive about Stuntman, and that they actually think Burnout does look "terrific."
And what do we think, having played both? Burnout is fast, real fast. And you feel extreme exhiliration avoiding traffic coming from every direction. And when you get hit, your heart drops out of your arse in shock.
Crash goes much more for a ballsy US feel. The crashes feel less fatal, but because the aim is just to destroy everything, you really feel heavily battered. It’s like a rugby scrum with cars.
In truth, very different games. Crash is set for release with the UK machine (currently penciled in for March) and Burnout hits PS2 on November 23.
Tom Guise
Wednesday, 05 September 2001 17:40 GMT
All at 60fps I cannot wait to get this game. Thats amazing if they can pull that off. Ps2 is a beast with polygons!!!!:eek: :eek: :eek:
