Burnout Revenge is Amazing!

I got Burnout Revenge through GameFly last week, and so far I'm having a ridiculous amount of fun with it. This is the first Burnout title I've played, because as a "traditional" racing fan, I thought that the idea of a game where you intentionally crash was ludicrous. However, the developers have tuned the gameplay into a really fun bunch of racing and/or crashing events, along with a progression that keeps you climbing the ranks.

Surprisingly, my wife thinks this game is the best thing since sliced bread. She really gets a kick out of the crash events, but the "traffic check" races (where you have to ram same-way traffic) always elicit these gleeful convulsions from her. I have a feeling that if she could ram a bus full of nuns off of a bridge, she'd simply pass out in some sort of gamer rapture as her fondest highway fantasies are realized.

Online play is a bit flaky, though I was primarily playing during the Free Xbox Live Weekend and the servers may have been under an extreme amount of stress. Also notable is that Microsoft doesn't run these particular Live servers ... EA has them under thier own control, which might be part of the equation. I only played ranked games, and it seems like people aren't fond of the team play games, preferring the "every man for himself" model (no offense intended, ladies).

I still need to finish Fight Night, but Burnout has been keeping me rather firmly distracted, and probably will continue to do so for another week or two.