So Many Bits

Note: I received a review code from Three Fields Entertainment to review this game. Whether or not you’re familiar with the Burnout franchise, Dangerous Driving will provide you with some thrills, but there may not be enough variety to keep you coming back for long. At its core, the fast paced racing provides some excitement, but at a definite cost; other game features you would normally associate with the franchise are either reduced or entirely absent. Between sparse options and occasionally confusing physics, I struggle to recommend this game outside of a deep discount or post-launch DLC.

For long-time gamers, Dangerous Driving’s core gameplay will distinctly resemble the Burnout series, and for good reason: developer Three Fields Entertainment is composed of veterans from Criterion Entertainment, which worked on many of the franchise’s previous entries. For the uninitiated, Dangerous Driving’s races are not merely high performance cars making circuits around a confined track. Instead, you must travel down roads and highways battling both the other drivers and pedestrian traffic.

To encourage you to take risks, a boost system rewards you with a limited burst of speed if you can stay just out of trouble while on the road. Driving in the oncoming lane, tailgating, and even catching air off hills can get you bonuses, while drifting through turns helps you maintain your speed and builds your meter. The best option though is simply to ram into the other cars you’re racing, as a “takedown” of one of your opponents maxes out your boost meter. To win races, you’ll generally want to take advantage of all these options, as in many cases you’ll need a healthy dose of boost to keep pace with everyone else.

Progression in the game is measured by various classes of car, with victories unlocking more and more exotic vehicles. Switching between the different categories though, I noticed only a slight difference in the sensations of speed and handling. For the most part, the SUV didn’t lurch or tip when making sudden movements, while the hypercar was just as good at vehicular combat as everything else. In terms of durability, everything appears to be equally resistant to taking hits, where any substantial impact will cause a crash that knocks you out of the race for several seconds.

Regardless of what you drive though, you may find yourself a little puzzled by the rules around what causes a crash. Sometimes barely grazing a passing car will knock you out, while other times you’ll just barrel through an oncoming vehicle. Recovering from a crash means beginning from a standstill, which costs you a ton of time, and in some select situations your car will even be pointed in the wrong direction. Artificial barriers on the course may or may not hedge your car onto the track or send you careening off into the distance.

Crashes are extra punishing because the game relies a bit too much on rubber banding: that is, artificially placing the other drivers near you regardless of how well you drive. No matter how clean your driving, rivals will appear to trade paint with you, and if you ever crash you’re certainly to drop to 3rd or 4th. A particularly egregious example was watching another car pass me as the notice “20 seconds ahead” blinked onto the screen. As the difficulty ramps up in later races, this feature only becomes more and more annoying. A typical sequence is to spend 30 seconds at the start of a course catching up to the other drivers, crashing because you had to drive recklessly to make up time, then spending another 30 seconds making up lost ground. While there is some decent variety in objectives, you will have to win some races to keep unlocking courses, and that unfortunately became a chore after a few hours of playtime.

As the core racing game becomes frustrating, the absence of a few features becomes more apparent. For one thing, Dangerous Driving does not include a built-in playlist of songs. Outside of the menu screen, you’ll only be able to hear music through integration with Spotify Premium. I could see that working for some people, but I don’t subscribe to that service so instead had to fill in with music or other background noise from a separate source. While I’ve certainly played other games with the sound off, some of my favorite memories from Crazy Taxi or Need for Speed: Most Wanted are associated with the soundtracks to those games.

Another, more serious issue is the complete lack of online play. While Three Fields currently has it on their May roadmap, competing against other players would help a lot when looking for a break from the single player progression.

Really, the biggest knock on Dangerous Driving is that for a game featuring flashy collisions and adrenaline soaked action, there is a noticeable lack of style to everything. A soundtrack would have helped with that, but there are other places where the function is there but no corresponding flash. Plain menu screens bring you into a plain pop-up explaining the race rules, with occasional variation between starting at a standstill or already rolling. Loading screens explain game features but use the same “Have you driven” or “Have you tried” template. Licensing authentic car names would have been difficult, but presumably fictional manufacturers would have chose flashier names than “Tuned Coupe” and “Advanced Coupe”.

If there was an opportunity, Dangerous Driving should probably have launched in Early Access or some other unfinished designation, as there are simply large aspects of the game lacking polish or that are entirely absent. While I’m empathetic to the developers need to make money on their existing work, if a buyer’s expectation is they are getting a complete game they will be disappointed. The core of an exhilarating racing title is here, with occasional action that reminds of the classic franchises this team created before. I hope they get the chance to realize the potential of what they’ve started sooner rather than later.