Traffic Attack
Let's start off with the new mode to the series, Traffic Attack. One of the new gameplay elements in Burnout Revenge is the ability to check traffic, bringing everyone's favorite element of hockey to the game. You can slam into any small or mid-sized car from the rear, turning it into a careening mass of destructive metal. Checked cars can take out your opponents or even pave a lane through other traffic, useful when trying to pass through an intersection.
Traffic Attack solely focuses on checking traffic. The goal is simply to score as many points as possible by slamming into massive amounts of vehicles while racing against the clock. The bigger the car, the more points you'll get for either checking it or comboing checked vehicles into something else. So while you can't directly check a bus as it's too big, you can get points for it by checking a smaller vehicle into said bus.
Along with nabbing some all-important points, checking vehicles will also earn boost as well as extra time. You begin a session of Traffic Attack with 99 seconds, but that might not even last an entire lap on some courses if you're not aggressive. Constantly smashing into cars will keep your gained/depleted time ratio reasonably even, though crashing sets you back quite a bit.
A green bar running along the top of the screen acts as a 20-second warning meter. Once you get down to 20-seconds or less, the meter begins to deplete, giving you a relatively easy-to-see representation of how screwed you are. This is where Traffic Attack gets really good. We thought the mode was pretty fun up to this point, if not rather straightforward, but once we were forced to really fight against both traffic and time, things got really good. With five seconds left and a lone hatchback in the distance, it becomes entirely satisfying to squeeze every last bit of boost out of your vehicle and catch the hapless car with half-a-second remaining. But even after the car is caught, you're only left with a few more seconds with which to catch another victim.
This is where the white-knuckle gameplay associated with the Burnout name really shows itself in this mode. The first bit of a Traffic Attack session seemed somewhat relaxed since we weren't really racing against anything other than a score. But once we were down to mere seconds on the clock, every vehicle check seemed like an extra breath of life, if even oh-so-short.
Something cool about Traffic Attack is that there's no limit to how long you can race. If you can manage to take out enough vehicles to keep your remaining time at a healthy number, then you can just keep racing. Each lap earns a point multiplier, so while a small car might earn you only a couple points on the first lap, it'll earn you double on the second and then 3X on the next.
