Burnout 3: Takedown has to be the most pure fun I’ve had with a driving game since Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. The development of this ever-improving franchise has probably reached its peak – I just don’t see how it is going to get much better.
If you’re looking for a racing simulation with lots of licensed cars, real-world tracks and 100-percent accurate driving physics, don’t cast your eyes toward Burnout 3. You’re not going to get any of those things. If you want go into a virtual garage to finely tune the performance of your car to squeeze another few miles per hour out of it, you’re not going to get that from Burnout 3 either. What you are going to get is one of the finest arcade racers that has probably ever been built. It takes many elements that have shown up in earlier games, refines them and knocks off the rough edges to make a superbly balanced game that is at once approachable by the novice and loaded with challenges for the skilled player.
In the more simulation driving games, hitting an opponent is usually not a good idea if the player wants to win. In Burnout 3, nudging the other guy into the rail and out of the race is really the only way to get ahead. Sure you could probably come in first not hitting anyone, but that does not get a driver the big points which earn the nice cars, nor is it that much fun. The over-the-top crashing is one of the things that makes Burnout 3 so much fun.
To show you just how arcade-like Burnout 3 is, there is no back story. Nope, no good reason for racing and crashing beyond the pure joy of it. What a refreshing idea. It’s a game just for the sake of the game. The ludologists must be ecstatic.
The career mode is called Burnout 3 World Tour. In this mode the player will race and crash on three continents. World Tour mode offers several racing events. Standard Race events are simple get-there-first events that will have the player racing a computer-controlled pack. In Grand Prix events player earns points in a series of races, with the winner the driver who accumulates the most points. Face Off events have the player racing one-on-one with a rival to take his car. Burning Lap is a time trial where the player must beat a set time in one lap. Eliminator events have the last car at the end of each lap eliminated from the race. Road Rage events (my favorite) are just for pure destruction as the player sees how many opponents he can takedown in the race. Special events are only awarded to drivers who have won gold medals in other events and represent a special reward to the driver.
Earning boost points and using them at advantageous moments is the surest way to win Race events. The player earns boost points by driving recklessly among the civilians, mixing it up with opponents and actually eliminating foes from the race with a takedown – total destruction of an opponent’s car.
In addition to the Race events, there are also Crash events. Crash events are a little like kinetic puzzles. In each event the player is trying to cause the greatest amount of damage possible in the time allotted. To do that he must drive his car into a crowded traffic area in such a way as to not only hit vehicles but also cause a chain reaction of events that will make initially-uninvolved vehicles hit one another. Scattered in these areas are cash bonuses, cash multipliers and cash-halving icons. Picking these up before and during the big crash have the specified effect on the final score. In each event there is Crashbreaker threshold (a number of collisions that must take place) that, if achieved, allows the player to detonate his car like a bomb – causing even more damage and mayhem. These events are especially addictive and will have players trying all sorts of crazy things over and over again to achieve the ultimate damage count.
Single-Player mode allows the gamer to play many of the events unlocked in World Tour for a quick fix or to see if he can do just a bit better in a crash event. (I really cannot over stress the addictive nature of the Crash events. They are insidious.) Multiplayer mode is two players at a time with both cooperative and competitive styles of play. A party mode lets up to eight individual players or four teams of two take turns causing the biggest wrecks. Burnout 3 also supports online play for up to six players.
Control of Burnout 3 could not be more elegant. The left analog stick steers the car. Acceleration and braking is handled with the X and square buttons or, my preference, the right analog stick. R1 is the boost button while L1 looks back. Personal note: looking back is dangerous. The R1 button also controls one of Burnout 3’s new additions over previous versions: Aftertouch. Aftertouch is the ability to control your car as it is crashing. It puts the game into Impact Time (a.k.a. bullet time) which slows things down and lets the player steer his demolished car toward opponents for one final hit or toward icons that confer cash bonuses or multipliers.
Graphically the game is beautiful and the animations as vehicles crash are amazing. The sense of speed is just unreal. It will have your adrenaline pumping to the max. (Don’t play just before bed. I was so pumped I lay awake seeing crashes in the dark.) The vehicles, while not licensed, look great and are evocative of many real-world vehicles. The audio is equally impressive. Engines rev and metal grinds most realistically. The driving tunes are good, but first chance you get, strangle the DJ, Stryker, in the options menu.
