''Danger Zone'' is a video game developed by

Three Fields Entertainment Three Fields Entertainment Limited is a British video game developer, video game development studio. It was founded in February 2014 by Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry, who had previously worked at Criterion Games, along with developer Paul Ross who ...

. The game involves driving vehicles at high speeds into various traffic situations to cause as much damage as possible. It is directly inspired by the Crash mode in the various '' Burnout'' games developed by

Criterion Games Criterion Games is a British video game developer based in Guildford. Founded in January 1996 as a division of Criterion Software, it was owned by Canon Inc. until Criterion Software was sold to Electronic Arts in October 2004. Many of Crite ...

, which the founders of Three Fields had been a part of prior to founding their own studio. It was released in May 2017 on Microsoft Windows and

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...

systems, and in October 2017 for

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

Gameplay

The player takes control of a car situated in virtual crash test facility, where one of about twenty scenarios are available, featuring parked or moving vehicles and other obstacles. The player's goal is to score as many points by driving their car into the scenarios (the "First Impact"), creating chain reactions of collisions. If the First Impact causes enough damage, they can then trigger a "SmashBreaker" (similarly to Burnout's "CrashBreaker") that causes their vehicle to explode, creating additional chain reactions for damage. Points are awarded based on the degree of damage done, including special points for unique targets and other scenario-specific goals. Players compete through online leaderboards to obtain the best score.

Development

The founders of Three Fields Entertainment, Fiona Sperry and Alex Ward, were former members of

, the studio that developed the '' Burnout'' racing series; ''Burnout'', unlike more traditional racing games, had a considerable focus on realistic collisions, and several games in the series included Crash mode, where players purposely drove vehicles into situations to wreck as many other vehicles as possible. As

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted th ...

, the publisher for ''Burnout'', transitioned the studio from ''Burnout'' to the ''

Need for Speed ''Need for Speed'' (''NFS'') is a racing game franchise published by Electronic Arts and currently developed by Criterion Games, the developers of ''Burnout''. The series generally centers around illicit street racing and tasks players to co ...

'' series, which was focused primarily on racing, Sperry and Ward left to found Three Fields, with the anticipation of developing a

spiritual sequel A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product lin ...

to ''Burnout''. The studio's first title ''

Dangerous Golf ''Dangerous Golf'' is a miniature golf game developed by Three Fields Entertainment, a studio formed by former Criterion Games founders and developers Fiona Sperry and Alex Ward. The game, as stated by the studio, is a mix of '' Burnout'', ''Bla ...

'', which is based on causing as much damage by hitting golf balls in enclosed spaces, was used to help develop the necessary tools through the

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genr ...

and middleware such as

PhysX PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite. Initially, video games supporting PhysX were meant to be accelerated by PhysX PPU ( expansion cards designed by ...

towards realizing their ''Burnout''-inspired goal. Development of ''Danger Zone'' started just after the studio published ''Lethal VR'', around December 2016. With three games completed since the studio's founding, they wanted to make sure they could replicate the ''Burnout'' Crash mode but now supported with more realistic physics enabled by modern computers and consoles, as at the time of the ''Burnout'' series' development, they had to make a number of sacrifices in the physics to have the game play well on older hardware. The team initially thought of setting the game in a

crash test A crash test is a form of destructive testing usually performed in order to ensure safe design standards in crashworthiness and crash compatibility for various modes of transportation (see automobile safety) or related systems and comp ...

facility inspired by those used in real-life, but found the clinical look would be a problem, and instead changed the appearance of the areas to be more industrial, which is how they derived the name for the game. To help the player visualize the course prior to crashing, they took inspiration of showcasing each scenario in segments, inspired by a similar visual tool used in the British show ''

Grand Designs ''Grand Designs'' is a British television series produced by Boundless and broadcast on Channel 4 which features unusual and often elaborate architectural homebuilding projects. The programme has been presented by Kevin McCloud since it fir ...

''.

Reception

''Danger Zone'' received "mixed or average" reviews according to video game

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, with all three platforms reaching a 64 out 100 rating.

Sequel

Three Fields announced ''Danger Zone 2'' in June 2018 to arrive the next month for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One systems. It will follow the same type of gameplay, adding more emphasis on the driving segments, and will have these crash courses take place within settings inspired by real world highways, such as the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, whic ...

in England or the freeways near

Los Angeles International Airport Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...

References

External links