At the end of July 2024, Microsoft closed their digital storefront for the xbox360. While they have done an admirable job at making their games available on subsequent consoles, some games never made the cut. With that impending closure, and some deep sales on games that were not made available on the xbox one or xbox series consoles, I decided to pick up any which had held some interest for me, but never enough to bite.
One of these games is Burnout Crash. As a fan of the series since the first game, the crash mode in particular has always been a winner for multiplayer gaming. My university videogames club spent many a session on the Crash modes in Burnout 2, Burnout Takedown and Burnout Revenge. And so a dedicated crash mode *sounds* like the sort of thing the club would have been all over, but unfortunately, it was received extremely poorly upon announcement. Rather than the traditional view of in or behind the car, it was instead a game viewed from above, making for a far simpler looking game than we were used to.
But given that it was only 99 cents, and is stuck on the xbox 360, this was my only chance to play it and find out if I was right to judge it so harshly.
And so, all I had to do was plug in my xbox360, hit the shop, and buy the game. Simple! Definately no complicated and frustrating steps here!
I present to you a guide to setting up an xbox360 you haven't used in years to purchase a game before the store shuts down. In case you end up travelling back through time and have nothing better to do.
Step 1: Plug in the xbox360 and boot it up for the first time in 5 years
Step 2: Update the system
Step 3: Reset the system
Step 4: Apply another system update
Step 5: Apply a shop update
Step 6: ...another system update?
Step 7: Realize the account on your Xbox 360 is NOT the same as the one you have since used for your Xbox series S/PC Gamepass
Step 8: Try to buy a game and realize you don't recall your password
Step 9: Try the passwords you think it might have been until the account is locked
Step 10: Try the "reset password" option, realizing it is related to an email address you haven't used in nearly a decade. Assume that will not come back to bite you.
Step 11: Be told that actually, that cannot be done from the Xbox 360, and instead, must be done via a specific website.
Step 12: Go to your PC and entre the address, only to end up at a dead website.
Step 13: Check your spelling and realize nope, you got it right, and Microsoft haven't bothered to keep this active.
Step 14: Instead try the generic Microsoft account login, and find that it does accept the old account details. Send a password reset link to the ancient email address.
Step 15: Go to yahoo email (I know, I was but a child), and attempt to log in
Step 16: Be told that you will have to wait an hour as yahoo is limiting logins to prevent unauthorized access
Step 17: Wait an hour
Step 18: Attempt to login, realizing you have forgotten the older email password as well
Step 19: Find out, amazingly, you linked this old email to your phone number, and have a code sent there
Step 20: Finally, access your code to reset your old Xbox profile password.
Step 21: Success! Now log back in to your Xbox 360 and access the store.
Step 22: Find the game. If it doesn't appear in the store, if might be hidden for some reason or not available in your region. Try the search bar and good luck!
Step 23: Attempt to buy your game, notice you have no linked card.
Step 24: Go through the frustrating process of entering card information using the terrible Xbox 360 d-pad.
Step 25: After all steps are complete, be told that actually, the Xbox cannot add a card right now because "8C250005".
Step 26: Go back to the Microsoft account login on your PC again, and add your credit card to your account there.
Step 27: Try again on the Xbox 360 and find out that the card details are still not appearing on the console shop.
Step 28: Through googling your problem, find out you should be able to download your other Xbox account to the Xbox 360 and use that instead, which definitely has a credit card linked to it already.
Step 29: Prepare to download your old account and realize that you could plug in a keyboard to at least make the text entry less arduous than the Xbox gamepad. Plug a keyboard in.
Step 30: As the account is downloading, accidentally drop your keyboard onto your Xbox 360, shattering part of the case, and causing the download to cease.
Step 31: Attempt to open the account and receive an error message.
Step 32: Try to download the account again, this time gripping your damaged keyboard tightly.
Step 33: With the account now finally on your Xbox360, have your son insist on setting up your avatar, even though it's really not very important right now.
Step 34: After ensuring your avatar has all the features your son insists upon, attempt to once again open the store.
Step 35: Once again, find the game you hoped to purchase before all of this began, and select the purchase option.
Step 36: Find out that no card option is on the new account either.
Step 37: Attempt to add the card again on the new account and get the same error code from Step 25.
Step 38: Go BACK to your PC, log in to your newer account, and then go to add your card to your payment options.
Step 39: Find out that the card is ALREADY THERE.
Step 40: Fine. Instead of adding a card, add credit. So, how do you do that?
Step 41: You... can't just buy credit directly? You have to buy a gift card and then redeem it?
Step 42: Go to the Microsoft store and find the gift cards. Add a $15 gift card to your cart.
Step 43: Have "Honey" pop-up insisting it might be able to find a discount. It can't. It never can. It's just sitting there, harvesting your delicious data for Bezos.
Step 44: After attempting to buy, have the website throw up an error message.
Step 45: Try the purchase again and have the same error message.
Step 46: God dammit.
Step 47: Like seriously, all this over a 99-cent game that you don't even really want.
Step 48: Notice that on the error page there is a list of items you can claim with your Microsoft Rewards points, one of which is a 5 dollar Gift card!
Step 49: Attempt to claim the card with your points, logging in several extra times despite already being logged in to have even see the gift card option at all.
Step 50: Confirm you wish to claim the card via a key code sent to your email.
Step 51: ....another error page. What.
Step 52: Notice the points have been taken from your account, but no email with the Xbox gift card
Step 53: Try not to cry
Step 54: But like, there's not enough points left to try to claim this again.
Step 55: Just in case, check what the account balance is on your Xbox 360
Step 56: Oh good lord, it's 5 dollars.
Step 57: Finally buy the game.
Step 58: Realize that if you want to buy any more games you're going to have to find another way to add credit to your account.
Step 59: That's a problem for future you.
Step 60: Oh hey, the email you were expecting back in step 52 finally arrived.
So now, finally, time to play the game!
I am convinced the people behind this game fundamentally misunderstood the appeal of the original crash mode. And it's not like they're a different developer, all Burnout games were made by Criterion.
The easiest way I can think to illustrate the drastic differences in how this game is played is to compare the crash mode of the original games to this. And so firstly, a typical run in burnout revenge:
By contract, here is a typical run in Burnout Crash:
That's 4 minutes on a first run where the player only gets 1 star. After a few runs myself I was able to get 2 stars, which took up over 6 minutes.
This game takes what was an absolute hit of a party game where players would quickly take turns creating devestating chaotic crashes, and turns it into what would be an absolute snooze fest to watch someone else play. We're talking 4-5 minutes per person. If you've got a couch filled with gamers, it could be half an hour for just one turn each on a single level if you have the misfortune of anyone playing knowing what they're doing.
One of the biggest strengths of crash mode was that despite the chaos you unleashed on screen, every level something you could learn the layout of to plan the perfect run. Cars always started in the same location, score multipliers were always in the same location, and any variables like wind direction were the same. Burnout Crash doesn't even have this, so the planning aspect for the perfect crash is entirely out the window. Cars will come from random directions, completely removing any planning skill required.
I'm not sure there's any value going further into it, but for the sake of completion, here's a list of other issues with the game:
- if your car touches anything on the way to the intersection (aside from crates) the game instantly fails you. Can't grind against the wall or crash and roll into the intersection.
- a run is over if 5 cars make it from one side of the map to the other, but at the start there's rarely enough cars to create a significant blockage, and so it's easy to have cars just drive through with no real chance to have done much about it.
- everything. Moves. So. Slowly.
- on top of horrendous load times, there's so much unskippable nonsense before you can actually play.
- the music is a huge step back from the rock/punk soundtrack of the original, instead opting for the occasional pop song sample whenever an effect is triggered.
- it tries and fails to have an "omg so random lol" sense of humor. Even in 2011 this humor was already dated.
But hey, at least The Hoff did an add for it (see what I'm saying about dated humor). I hadn't watched this until long after my thoughts on the game had started to coalesce, but perhaps I should have:
OH. Kinect made it bad huh. That actually explains ALMOST everything. The game has to be slow because the Kinect sensor was extremely unresponsive and imprecise. The budget would have been low because by 2011, Kinect was already falling out of favor.
It still doesn't explain why it's such a terrible party game, when that was the only type of game that made sense for Kinect.
It's a complete shame that this was the final Burnout game. There's only been remasters of Burnout Paradise since, which doesn't even have a crash mode. Give the world a remaster of Burnout 3, EA. We need something to give us hope in these dark times.
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