I suppose that death also tends to be a very natural metaphor for a common mechanic of deleting an entity in a game state.

The crash mode in burnout 2 is certainly very fun, but it does feel quite random. After your initial impact (Assuming the sometimes crazy collision detection works) the outcome is deterministic, but that consistancy is based on so many different aspects that the outcome is actually unpredictable by a frail human mind. It’s chaos, literally – percieved randomness from deterministic rules. So, the player is force to blindly try to find a “sweet spot” that will cause the most damage. (Over Analysis time) Maybe this says something about creativity and marketing – you can do a lot to try to achieve a hit with your film/song/book/game, but after your initial efforts, its success is really out of your hands (I should never be allowed to over analyse anymore. Accept my humble apology).

(I’m just saying that it’s really rather hard to play skilfully or intentionally. It’s a complex way of rolling dice. A very fun way, no doubt, but still pretty random (and randomly pretty)).