Burnout 3: Takedown

"Takedown? What kind of buzzword is that anyway?"

"Takedown. Noun; the act of driving forcefully into another vehicle whereby it is renderred unable to continue driving, without causing your own vehicle to crash." That is the EA definition for that particular buzzword. You'll see it in the instruction manual, and it's said often enough in the game. Personally I think take out is better, but Burnot 3: Takeout, just reminds me of poorly cooked fast food.

Burnout 3 is, a racing game. your ultimate goal is to unlock every car and course. With 67 cars to unlock, and thirty courses it's going to take you a while. Truth be told I'm still at 97% complete after owning the game for over two years. This is most likely because getting the last few cars is very difficult. The cars are split into seven types. Compacts are the slowest, with muscle cars, coupe's, sports cars and super cars all getting ten cars each. You start with three compacts, and do a handful of compact races. Win enough of them and you get the muscle series and so on.

The remaining 17 cars are all special cars, some of which can only be used for crash mode. These cars include things like dump trucks, buses, and fire engines for the crash only vehicles, and other cars like the circuit racer, the green custom coupe from Burnout 2, and the hot rod from Burnout 2, as well as F1 cars. Most the cars are unlocked by coming first in certain races, or by achieving certain scores in crash mode, with the last few cars being awarded for things like collecting every signature takedown (i.e. a takedown at a predesignated place), or by achieving certain skills like causing an opponent to crash twice into a bus in a race.

The cars all handle differently, according to type, supercars are fast, and difficult to control, muscle cars are quite hard to corner with and compacts are slow but manuverable. Thing is though, there doesn't seem to be a really noticeable difference amongst cars in each type. Whenever I was forced to choose a car within a certain type, I just chose whichever took my eye, and went with it. It didn't really make much difference what car you chose within the bracket, they all handle near enough identically.

The game itself has four main modes, race, time trial, road rage and crash. Time Trial is self explanatory, you in a car against the clock. Races aren't that hard to figure out either, it's either you verses one apponent, or you versus five (in the main game at least, in single race you can choose the number of opponents). Road Rage puts you against three racers, who will stay near you, and you have to repeatedly take them out until either time runs out (this only happens in the main game, not in single race) or you crash once too often and are unable to continue.

The final mode, Crash Mode, breaks away from the main game, and changes your target away from avoiding cars, to causing as big a crash as you can. These are in pre designated areas, and tend to have more cars in them. The area is usually litterred with powerups, such as score multipliers, and instant boost. Problem is though, most can be one by hitting the X4 multiplier, and then aiming for any petrol tankers you find nearby. There's at least one tanker in every crash site, and blowing it up adds nearly $100,000 to your total. add on the rest of the damage the surrounding explosion(s) will cause, and quadruple it, and your only problem getting a score of over a million dollars will be making sure you hit both those targets.

The main races are an entirely diferent kettle of fish. You start with a simple short turbo bar, which is empty. It fills up with everytime you perform some reckless driving, be it driving in oncomming traffic, powersliding round corners, getting big air off jumps, or driving ridiculously close to non competing traffic. once you get a big enough bar, it's possible to go the entire race without ever running out of turbo, and therein lies the thrill. Drive recklessly to go faster, to allow you to drive even more recklessly so you can keep going faster. It's a very simple concept that hooks, and it works. The innevitable crash that will happen only serves as a reminder that being completely reckless isn't going to pay off, and you need to be reckless yet skillful.

As I said though, the turbo bar is short. There is a way to add to it however, by acheiving takedowns on your opponents. This is done in two ways, by either causing your oppenent to crash as you drive past nudging them, or by throwing you wrecked car at them after you've crashed yourself. Everytime you successfully takedown a car, your meter is increased by a quater of it's full length, so three takedowns is all you need to get a full turbo bar. Achieving a takedown also completely fills your boost bar, so performing one whenever possible is recmmended.

The downside to takedowns comes from crashing. If you crash you lose a quater of the total bar, and the bar is completely emptied. The aftertouch mode, which lets you control your car after you crash, allows you to try and make up for this by giving you an after crash takedown, which will lengthen your bar and fill it when you reappear on the track. Aftertouch has a prefixed camera though, and it's not always where you want it to be. It's usually showing the road infront, or if you've been thrown high into the air, it'll show the sky. This makes spotting any opponents ready for an aftertouch takedown difficult, and is quite frustrating. This problem becomes even worse in crash mode, often causing you to lose your bearings, and stopping you from being able to see where your targets are.

The tracks themselves are all varied looking, and each one requires practice to master. There are some long looped stages, and some point to point races, but for the most part these are minute lap tracks, with each time through being slightly different depending on traffic, and if any crashes have occoured directly infront of you or not. The last selection of levels is set in the far east, meaning that traffic is on the other side of the road. This simple twist makes the last few races a fraction more interesting. The layout of traffic however is not entirely random, with vehicles usually being in the same sort of area each lap, even if it's not the particular vehicle you passed the lap prior. Some would moan that that ruins the realism of this game, but this is not a game for realism, especially with each course being marked by big arrows blocking invisible walls which stop you from straying off course.

The sounds in this game are very good, with engine roars and shatterring glass all sounding correct. The game also has a DJ, DJ Striker. In all honesty he's a nuisance, and best turned off ASAP. The soundtrack will not be everyone's tastes, falling neatly into the punk/rock genre. Annoyingly not all songs can be completely turned off, meaning unless you have no objections to any of the soundtrack you may find yourself pressing the skip track button mid race because one of those songs you dislike has come up. There's no way to change the song in the pause menu, it's done by pressing L2. Furthermore EA's little song pop-up blocks the boost bar, so everytime you change song you'll have to wait several seconds before you can see how desperate your boost bar is for a refill.

For some reason, there isn't even any music in split screen multiplayer. This seems daft to me, if it's because of the aftertouch mode, then where's the problem? there's no slow motion for multiplayer aftertouch, for fairness on the second player, so why not have the music play uninterrupted if there's a crash?

Another gripe I had with this game was that more often than not, upon crashing, you'd find yourself restarted going at about 60 miles an hour with about three feet between you and another oncming vehicle. It's bad enough to crash once, but to crash almost instantly, and thus losing half your boost bar, as well as the time it takes to get back to the race can be a pain. It's never serious enough to cost you a race, but it would've been better if you could've started with a clear road for a couple of seconds each time you crashed.

So if this games flawed, why am I still playing it? Surely the sequal improves on at least some of the problems of this game, and I should be hooked on that over this old game? The answers no, because the one thing the sequal doesn't have that this one does is the single race time trial. That's what's kept me hooked so long, not trying to get the last three percent, not multiplayer, but tiem trial. I'm not even trying to beat best times here. The joy here comes from driving around aimless numbers of laps, until the computer forces me to stop, just dodgeing traffic, and driving for as long as I can without crashing. It's aimless gameplay in the same way freeskate is in the Tony Hawks series. There's nothign to be unlocked, no need to meet a target, just your car and the open road.

That is the simple pleasure that's kept me playing this over it's sequal. being able to aimlessly drive around a track, without any risk to my own safety. It's exactly what gaming should be about, doing something because it's fun to do it, free from the consequences doing it in real life would have. Drive like this in real life, and if your lucky enough to live, they'll remove your licence. Do it in the game, and the worst you'll get is a sore thumb.

Burnout 3: Takedown has managed to capture the essence of driving freedom, whether it intended to or not. Your cars handle as you would expect them to. Your roads contain other motorists going on there own journeys. Your background isn't some racetrack in the middle of nowhere. Gran Turismo may be the most authentic and realistic comparason to getting into a car and driving, but Burnotu 3: Takedown is the most fun you'll ever have behind the wheel of a small three door hatchback.

Graphics: 10
Beautiful, vibrant cities, and lush natural areas make for an impressive visual display

Gameplay: 10
The very essence of everything enjoyable about driving

Sound: 8
The music won't be everyone's tastes, and DJ Striker needs to be turned off

Lifespan: 9
you'll be playing it until Burnout 5

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/29/07