Burnout Dominator for the PS2 continues the Burnout tradition with wild mayhem. You want to "drive badly" to earn boost points - which then lets you go super-speed and burn up the competition.



The whole point of this game is to destroy things. When you're racing you get points for riving on the wrong side of the road, for smashing into other cars, and general mayhem. Your aim is to rack up these points and then turn them into a super-turbo-boost which has you flying down the track.

Really the game comes down to near-missing your enemies as much as you can. If you hit them you always crash, and while you can try to steer your flying hulk into other cars, that's not nearly as much fun as driving.

There's a series of popular songs as the soundtrack which depending on your musical tastes is great or really annoying. The other sounds are simply the vrooming of the engines and the screeches of crashes.

The graphics are really where you make or break a driving game. You have to be able to see what's coming at you, especially at super high speed. I realize this game is on the PS2 and not a higher end console, but even so it is very dark and blocky. In many levels it is nearly impossible to know what is ahead and you have to make your best guess. This gets frustrating quickly in a driving style game.

Also, the "tutorial" levels are really annoying. You get interruptive pop-up messages right in the middle of high speed driving - numerous times - that keep jolting you out of the fun of what you're doing. They really could have handled that better.

I do enjoy smash-em racing games in general, and I know there's a lot of fun involved in games like this. I'd say to test other games of this variety though before you buy this one - you can easily find other similar games with better graphics and more satisfying smashing.

Rating: 3/5

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