Danger Zone Review: Clean, Wholesome Carnage
/The best way to explain Danger Zone is “Burnout Crash Mode: The Game”. If you’ve never played Burnout’s Crash mode (not that anyone would blame you for the time it’s been since a Burnout game had one), here’s a quick explainer on what Danger Zone is all about.
Danger Zone is a game about flying your car into intersections, and other convoluted scenarios, at a hundred miles an hour and causing as much carnage as possible, as cars pile up around you and create a domino effect that cascades against itself and eventually envelops the entire play area in a lovely orgy of mangled metal and twisted tailpipes.
Oh, but don’t let a description like that fool you into thinking that it’s just intersections. There’s far more to experience than the pedestrian act of merely driving into traffic with reckless abandon. Intersections are just where it starts. As for where it ends up; let’s just say that the words ‘thrill-seeking multi-level explosion-fueled crashfest spectacular’ don’t not explain it.
While the game is ostensibly about doing your best to speed-mangle 5 vehicles together into one giant monstrosity, it’s not just about crashing cars. You’ll spend most of your time chaining crashes, explosions, and traffic collisions, to create a trail of destruction across each level, which get more and more convoluted as you progress through the game. What starts off as a simple ‘crash into traffic and cause a pileup’ affair quickly turns into a game of hurling other drivers into an oncoming highway lane, veering into that lane, causing a pileup, intentionally exploding, and maneuvering your wrecked vehicle through the level, using said explosions to hop around so you can do it again 2 or 3 more times while the wreckage piles up in your wake. Now that’s my idea of a good time! Not that that’s all Danger Zone has to offer. Yes, it gets even crazier than that, introducing concepts like multi-stage, multi-level environments, where even more fun awaits you many meters below the floating roadway you’re currently blowing to smithereens - I’ll leave that for you to discover.
Danger Zone’s traffic doesn’t exist strictly to react to the player. There’s a whole dynamic system that’s been built here. Slam into a truck, and watch the vehicles pile up around it (and you). Veer into oncoming traffic and see the cacophony play out. A single domino is enough to put into motion a self-perpetuating avalanche of flying steel that doesn’t stop until every available car has been ground to scrap metal or simply blown away. And all you did was fly through the air in a fireball going the speed of wanton destruction and chaos.
Danger Zone might seem, at first glance, just a mindless game about smashing into things, but it’s really an intricate puzzle game that just happens to feature smashing into things as it’s main gameplay mechanic. You can’t just hurl some cars into oncoming traffic and move on to the next scenario. The developers make sure that you see everything the level has to offer, whether you like it or not, using a medal system ranging from bronze to platinum. It sounds daunting, but the requirements for bronze aren’t too demanding. You’ll get there after a few attempts. There are also global leaderboards for the ultra-competitive among us. You’ll be shown your level-specific high score, as well as a ranking that pits you against the very best players in the world. I’m here struggling to get to 14 million on this one level, yet some dude is out there scoring double that somehow. Bonkers.
It’s not all sunshine and tire marks, however. While this is truly a fantastic game that brings an experience that many have been lusting after for quite some time, it’s flaws stand in the way of perfection, as far as a game about smashing things together goes. Unfortunately, these aren’t minor gripes, and while Danger Zone remains a fantastic game in spite of them, they prevent it from truly reaching the next level.
For instance, as I described earlier, many of the levels have you descending down to lower platforms or areas. The problem is that there is no way to angle the camera to better see where you’re falling. The car’s mid-air controls are generous, but an inability to see exactly where you’re falling (and therefore where you’ll land), can quickly build up frustration as it ruins an otherwise personal-best run.
The camera problem also extends to driving. While it certainly doesn’t cause as big a problem as falling blind, it causes another kind of (more mild) blindness. See, Danger Zone handles the camera the way that a lot of arcade driving games do; behind the car and close to the ground. It looks good in a screenshot, but it doesn’t make for good driving when you can’t see what’s in front of you. Other games either give you multiple options on camera positioning, or, if bad comes to worse, they let the player manually push the camera up with the thumb stick while they drive. Danger Zone does neither, so you’re driving half blind (until the first crash, anyway). While a relatively minor gripe in an otherwise stellar game, you’ll definitely notice it more than a few times - and not only because I just told you about it!
Another issue that I’ve noticed isn’t exactly a problem in that it impedes gameplay, but given the kind of game Danger Zone is, it’s omission certainly is curious; a reply mode. This isn’t just about recording gameplay. I’m talking about some way to help you appreciate the damage you’ve caused throughout the level you just played. A full-fledged gameplay recorder would be the gold standard; having the game automatically play the whole level back for you, exactly the way that you played through it, leaving you free to sit back and enjoy it with different camera angles and so forth. Instead, all we get is an underwhelming fly-through of a level full of discarded, crumpled vehicles. Hell, I’d settle for a “greatest hits instant replay” right after you finish a level, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
Danger Zone is the kind of game where you’ll want (or need) to retry the levels again and again, until you’re happy with the score you’ve attained. It’s a shame then that you can’t instantly retry if you mess up. You can pause the game and the ‘retry’ button will be right there, as will it be at the end of the level after the score has been tallied up. If you press it, however, you’re shown a short loading screen (less than 5 seconds), and then a 3, 2, 1 countdown, before you’re allowed to control your car. That’s less than 10 seconds from fail to retry, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but, god damn, when you’ve failed the same level for the 6th time in a row, you want to get in there right away. You don’t want to sit through even one second of loading. Cluster Truck did it, so why not Danger Zone? They’re both puzzle games that heavily rely on dynamic physics simulations, and yet Cluster Truck lets you instantly retry a level, while Danger Zone does not. Curious. Of course 5 seconds of loading is a petty gripe, but it does feel longer when you’re in the heat of the action. Also, keep in mind that I played this on the PS5 off of the internal SSD. I started playing off of a mechanical hard drive, and the SSD did seem faster by a few seconds. Then again it could have just been me and my skewed perceptions.
One more gripe about this game; no level editor. Danger Zone is begging for a level editor and some way to share levels with other players, ala Super Mario Maker. Looking at all the amazing, creative things that the developers did, it saddens me that we’ll never be able to see what the community would have achieved.
We’ve discussed a few nitpicks and issues but this is, overall, a solid game. Great level design, lots of replayability, and great variety. The PS5 says I played this game for 8 hours, but it also claims I only played Fallout 4 for 9 hours total (which, yeah, okay buddy). In reality I beat this game in about 12-16 hours. During that time I played each level a handful of times each. I had a blast. Also of note; while the game ran at a stable 30fps at all times on my PS5, I have heard of framerate drops on the base PS4, so there’s something to be aware of.
Whether on sale or at full price ($22.95 on the Australian store as of right now), Danger Zone is a great game that will keep you occupied for a very pleasant few days, and even longer if you chase those high scores, or whip the game out for your friends to fiddle with.
