"Burnout 2 is probably the best of the 'old school' games, from what I've seen. Lovely crash junctions, some charming minigames (including a Chase HQ-style cop chase) but everything is left down to your skill rather than EA handholding."
Burnout 2 WOULD be my favourite of all the Burnout games I've played (the first 4, not Paradise or Dominator ). The racing is much more skillful than the later games & the cop-chase mode is ace. Also, the speed of the racing hadn't quite reached "mad bastard" levels by this point and I actually really enjoyed playing Burnout 2 in cockpit/first-person view (the next 2 games were just too fast for this to be feasible for me).
HOWEVER, the racing has some of the most blatant rubberband/catch-up AI I've come across in a racing game. You can drive perfectly for most of a race, make a slight mistake near the end, then watch as the opposition goes roaring past you. This can be incredibly annoying, especially as (if memory serves) you often have to complete a series of races in one go, so when you've done well on the first couple of races and it happens on the last stretch of your final race, it's throw-the-controller-at-the-screen time.
The catch-up is till there in Burnout 3 and Revenge but it doesn't seem to be as bad, plus if you mess up, you only have to do the one race again, which isn't as frustrating.
As for Crash Mode, I still think Burnout 3's is the best (despite the heart-breakers), at least on last-gen consoles. Burnout 2 has a great Crash Mode, sure, but there isn't enough variety (I think there are only 15 crash junctions on the PS2 version, and some extra ones on the Xbox version - compared to about 100 on Burnout 3 & Revenge).
Revenges' Crash Mode on last-gen annoys me for 2 reasons. First, the annoying launch system (mentioned above - and apparently dispensed of for the 360 version from what I can gather from davpaz ?). Secondly, if you messed up and wanted to quickly try again, could you ? Oh no, you had to wait while the part of the track you'd driven (before crashing) scrolled back in slow-motion until it reached the start-line (and you couldn't skip it). On crash junctions that you needed multiple attemps at, this became annoying very quickly (is this also despensed with in the 360 version ?).
Anyway, on balance, I liked Burnout 3 best overall, closely followed by Burnout 2, then Takedown (there's only a tiny bit between each of them). They're all great games despite individual flaws (and I still own them all on my Xbox1).
Edit - Burnout 1 is easily the weakest in the series IMO. The earlier tracks are pretty enjoyable, but later on they have far too many twists and turns where it's virtually GUARANTEED that there will be a car heading at you in the opposite direction around nearly every blind corner you take. This quickly killed the fun for me.....
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