All the recent talk of Sega racing games has fired up the ol' memory banks and helped me to recall the hype and fall of this tired series.
Like a lot of people I purchased Burnout when it came out; Gamecube version if you must know. Played it a fair bit, sort of liked it and then got tired of it. If I remember correctly the first game had scripted traffic and a heavy punishment for the slightest of mistakes. It worked because you were balancing on a knife edge of risk versus reward. What confused me at the time was the press coverage the game got. It was heralded as the rebirth of the arcade racer and the blueprint for the future of the genre. Ah the benfit of hindsight 
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I skipped Burnout 2, which most people hold up as a good game and came back to the franchise with Burnout 3 on the XBox. Was I in for a dissapointment. Anything that made the original even half enjoyable was gone replaced by DJ Striker "How cool is that?". Twat. Burnout 3 is a vacuous mess of a game completely devoid of challenge, fun, ideas, basically anything that makes a game good, yet the accolades still rolled in.
After that I never went back. Only to the demo pods in games retailers to confirm that the latest Burnout offering was yet another coat of Brasso on the same turd.
Then last year we get Burnout Paradise a game which I know absolutely nothing about. It could be the best thing since Daytona USA; then again...
Burnout 2 was the highlight for me, they toned down the difficulty so that it was more fun but still held imminent danger, and added crash mode. It was also excellent on the Cube with the logitech wheel.
The later games (I only got as far as Revenge), made things way too easy, added too much luck to crash mode (heart breaker indeed), and went for visuals thrills over any real challenge. It became a tedious mission-fest. The presentation of the EA published versions were offensively patronising too.
When I fired up Revenge and found the first head-on collision challenge was essentially endless as you could top up the time limit forever, I gave up on Burnout for good.
LOL that's piss poor.
I still wonder about Paradise though. I'm ever so slightly curious as to whether it's any good or not.
I also find it sort of odd when developers can't work out why a game is good and build on it, as opposed to breaking things progressively, more and more, with each iteration.
Luck should in my opinion never be a significant factor in any game. Sure it has to be in there and can be mightily entertaining, but it shouldn't be the make or break of it.
I Loved Burnout 2. Heading into oncoming traffic, grazing by to infinitely loop boosts, knowing all the while that one tiny mistake could ruin everything. It's the sort of game where you always feel like you could do that little bit better... a lot like Crazy Taxi.
Burnout 3 I found to be quite enjoyable but in a totally different way. Crashing into opponents is pure fantasy racing, very satisfying. It adds a whole new dynamic to the racing that actually makes Burnout 3 a wholly different game to its predecessors.
Sadly, the series went downhill from there for me. Burnout Revenge bored me to tears. Being able to cut through traffic as well as other racers meant you could virtually win a race with your eyes closed. Burnout Paradise, meanwhile... I actually found that unplayable. How can you win an open-world race when you have to look at the sat-nav every 2 seconds?