Back in the early 2000’s, there was a little series that you might have heard of known as Burnout
A racing game by genre, Burnout was much more than crossing a finish line first . It actually awarded players for being crazy, out-of-control drivers. From near misses to driving in the wrong lane, you were rewarded for your pretty terrible driving.
It’s a series that was memorable for many reasons, but none more than it’s crash mode.
A mode that required you to race down a stretch of road with the sole goal of causing the most catastrophic crash possible. There really was nothing better.
Fast forward a decade since the Burnout series’ last full release, and members of the team from the franchise are back with Danger Zone 2.
The sequel to 2017’s Danger Zone, Danger Zone 2 once again takes the crash mode from the burnout series, and attempts to make it into a full game.
For the most part, it works pretty well.
The game places you on real highways throughout the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain with the task of causing as much mayhem as possible. From taking out every van you see on the road to sending cars off the highway, there’s a new task to accomplish with each course on top of the main crash.
These tasks, called “run-ups”, add a uniqueness to each course that give you more to do than just drive to the intersection and get yourself on the national news. It’s nice way to increase your score, and adds a bit of strategy, if you will, to each level. On top of that, the different vehicles each level offers provide players with a nice change of pace between each course. Whether you’re driving a simple sedan or an F1 car that requires you to weave in and out of traffic to reach the intersection in time, there’s a nice mixture of vehicles to enjoy throughout the game.
Where the game starts to disappoint is with its depth. To put it bluntly, there isn’t any.
The game offers no multiplayer — local or online — whatsoever. It basically forces players to stop playing once they achieve platinum status on each course, which isn’t too difficult to earn. The addition of any sort of multiplayer could’ve very well made this game more appealing over time. Without it, it will quickly find itself gathering that digital dust.
The other big downfall of Danger Zone 2 are the plethora of technical issues.
Countless times while driving, you make contact with a car only to watch your car get spun completely around and launched in a different direction. Collision detection within the environment is inconsistent at best as you’ll cash into a pole or hill, but drive right through a guard rail or tree. Even with other vehicles, the hit detection can be pretty poor as you can hit a car in the middle of an intersection but end up not causing any sort of major crash.
Lastly, the graphics are nothing to write home about. They aren’t bad by any sense, but they don’t really stand out, either. Damage visuals on your cars — aside from when you activate your Smashbreaker — make it look like your car just suffered some minor dings while being in the center of a major accident.
VERDICT
For what it is, Danger Zone 2 isn’t a bad game.
It takes the best mode from the classic Burnout series and brings it front and center for a new generation of fans. The crashes are over-the-top, and the added run-up objectives add a little bit more depth to each course. But for everything that Danger Zone 2 does well, it falls short in too many areas to likely keep players invested.
At $20, the price point isn’t the worst, but there isn’t enough content in the game to justify the cost. That fact becomes even more apparent when you consider that you can get Burnout Revenge, a game that’s backwards compatible on the Xbox One, for half the cost.
The foundation is there for a great series, but it’s going to take Three Fields Entertainment a few more years to get things just right.
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