danger zone is a game i went into with a lot of excitement, though i am not a massive racing game fan, i enjoyed the burnout games a lot and these were advertised as the continuation of that, danger zone as the crash mode and dangerous driving as the racing experiance. while i did get facimilies of a burnout experiance, they play alike in a way that is still mildly refreshing, they also fall massively short of being games i love and feel passionate about, and there's a few reasons for this. i don't usually like making things about games i don't care all that much for, i'd much rather be passionate and talk about games i love, if a game doesnt vibe with me then i just usually don't write about it as i don't have much to say, but i feel like these games have some issues that are emblematic about a lot of games i tend to see and play, that they're a modern revival that misses one major thing that they needed to capture from their original games, they lack the heart and soul.

what i mean by this is a little harder to define than a usual flaw with a game, flaw's don't always bother me, low frame rates can ba cathartic, "bad" writing and voice acting charming, "bad" controls can be a different way to experiance a game genre and "bad" graphics can still be brimming with artistry in ways a more polished game couldn't. i don't even mind not vibing with a games gameplay, to me a gameplay is secondary to almost everything else, it's there to complement a games other aspects, rather than it being the core aspect of a game to me. They don't even feel all that bad to begin with, they play well and resemble the games they wish to succeed in the ways that matter to the gameplay, but here is the issue for me, that's more or less the only area in which they succeed. for a start there's how the games look, danger zone has a very ugly aesthetic, very clinical while also being very grimy, every level is just roads and cars in a warehouse, there's no charm and nothing to really make the game stand out, it could very well be a unity asset flip (which my partner assumed it was), it's very unappealing and it feels like almost no real attention was paid to this aspect, the same goes for music, there is none and this is a massive shame as burnout always had absolutely killer ost's with the likes of MCR and avril, while these are much smaller affairs, a small scale in house ost would have done wonders to give the game closer vibes to that, because as it is the game feels very empty and souless both visually and aurally, which is a far cry in comparison to burnout 3's y2k cool futurist UI, killer OST and emo notebook vibes. this really is the crux of it, the games just don't have the soul or the vibe down, even dangerous driving which gets a little closer to burnout in terms of looks, also just fails this, it has no edge, no spark, they forgo an OST to ust throw in spotify intigration which is just a massive shame and kinda icky to me, i don't like that and it's a trend i never want to see catch on and its tracks also have a very bland feeling to them. this gets to the heart of things, both games feel like husks, bland games made to capitalise on a franchise rather than really reapturing what made it special, burnout was partially appealing because of its gameplay yes, but that was not the only reason, the game captured the mid 2K's emo vibe better than most games that really even attempted to, it had the music, the rush, the edge, it felt angsty and cool and it vibed with me in ways that made me feel nostalgic even though i had never played burnout 3 until this year, that heart and soul is what made those games special and without that, these games will never be anything more than okay, you don't necessarily need to capture a vibe 1:1 even to be great, but both games don't even have enough personality to standout on their own as games, and that's a real shame.

danger zone plays well though, at least, while the game feels souless and looks very boring, it can be fun, the crash mode from burnout was always a great time, and while this can't measure up, it does try and it captures some of it, though with the lack of any real location and the fact the games cars do not stay on the track a lot of the time due to the fall's and some blue forcefields that dissolve cars, it lacks some of that catharsis that comes from burnout, and the fact none of the tracks really stand out due to the games aesthetics means they feel a lot less replayable, i never found myself going back and replaying them. (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)