Disappointed. That is how I feel about this latest addition to my favorite racing line. The Burnout: Dominator PSP addition's issues don't really show up until you start talking about the gameplay, so I will have to wait to explain myself in that section.

As far as the visual and audio aspects of Dominator, its a nice mix of good and average. Like the previous PSP title, Burnout: Legends, the cars and environments show up nicely, if not a little pixelated, on the portable system. Races take place around the world so you get a good mix of the various architectural styles from each location and these buildings come off pretty well, though you aren't really focusing on them all that much since you are speeding past everything.

At least Dominator seemed to have a nice selection of music to sift through via EA's Trax system. Dominator has a wide variety and included several bands that I count among my top picks (including Jane's Addiction and Alice in Chains).

Here is where I start to talk bad about Burnout: Dominator. I have been a fan of the series since Geck0 got Burnout 3: Takedown in for review. As both he and I have said on several reviews, I was at his place playing that game till 3 AM on several occasions. When Burnout: Revenge came out, the same thing happened (except this time it was my own review copy).

What got me pulled into the series so hard were the Crash Events. These were modes that didn't force you to be the fastest or even the most maneuverable person in the game. You had to race your car into an intersection and cause as much damage to other vehicles as possible. I would replay missions dozens of times just to rack up just a little more collateral damage and earn another gold medal. One of my biggest disappointments with Dominator (both the PSP and PS2 versions) is the lack of any Crash Events. For the most part, I considered these events to be the reason to play the game. I would work my way through the other types of events just so I could throw myself into another intersection over and over again. I was not pleased when I found this latest version to be lacking.

The other major step backwards that Dominator seems to take is a lack of same-way traffic checking. In Revenge, you could hit ambient traffic that was moving in the same direction as you and have it fly into other racers and/or traffic to earn takedowns and points. Unfortunately, it seems like Dominator is going back to the way traffic was handled back in Burnout 3. I really can't rag on the PSP version too much about this, since the previous PSP game (Burnout: Legends) which came out at the same time as Revenge didn't have traffic checking either, but I just can't see why they wouldn't bring that aspect of the game into the portable version, much less take it out of the series completely.

Okay, now that I've gotten that off of my chest, let's talk about what Dominator adds to the series. There are a couple of aspects to this game that are either new, or haven't been a part of the series for the last couple of games (again, I didn't get into Burnout until the third title). One of these is chained burnouts. This is when you have built up so much boost that your gauge turns blue and if you use up your entire boost in one stint, it refills and nets you a ton of points. The more boosts you chain, the quicker you rack up points and the more "maniac" points you get. These maniac points are the other addition.

Maniac points take what you did in past games to earn boost (driving on the wrong side of the road, near misses, etc.) and earn you points to get you higher medals and help you unlock vehicles. There isn't a whole lot to them, except that now there is a new event type that sees how many maniac points you can rack up.

It seems that Dominator's focus is mostly on speed. With the inclusion of chained boosts and the need for maniac points in order to progress, you will find yourself rushing through races and events more than ever and while that makes sense for a racing game, it also makes the races really short and that seemed to hurt the gameplay a bit.

Burnout: Dominator also supports multiplayer races with up to 4 gamers. Here you get to see who is the fastest and who can take out the most rivals in an event. At the end of the day, you can upload your scores to the leaderboards and you can also download new tracks (though there were none to download at the time this review was written).

Burnout: Dominator's difficulty is pretty average. I found that I was able to get bronze medals on most or all of the events without much effort and I typically had to replay races several times before I earned the gold. Also the amount of points you need in order to advance in the game seemed to be about right. Let me explain that a bit - each medal earns you a certain number of Dominator Points. Once you reach a certain number, you move up to the next rank and you unlock new locations. If you go through all of the events in a rank and you just get bronze, or even just silver, you aren't likely to open up the next series. Instead you need a good mix of all three medal types in order to reach the minimum number of points.

Burnout: Dominator's controls are similar to most racing games on the PSP and the series' slight eccentricities fit well into the portable's controls. You steer with the analog stick and use the (X) button for acceleration and Square for the hand-brake. You boost by holding down the (R) button and look behind you with the (L). When you have crashed, you can use the (R) button and analog stick to use Aftertouch (the ability to move your car while it is in the air even after you have wrecked). There aren't a whole lot of surprises in this department, and as always, the PSP's analog nub seems to be more of a hindrance and doesn't allow for minute enough control over the vehicles. However, I've learned to get used to it, and most PSP owners probably have at this point as well.

I'm not sure what to say as far as recommendations are concerned. The parts of the series that really helped to make it stand out have been removed. The only way I would recommend this title to someone is if they just didn't like the Crash Events, but then you might as well buy another racing game. If you are looking for a portable Burnout game, then hunt down Legends, because even though it didn't have traffic checking, it did have the Crash Events.