Burnout 3: Takedown

"I Feel the Need... The Need For [CRASH]"

You better have lightning fast reflexes and a quick eye. Because Burnout 3: Takedown is a blazingly fast racing game. Spanning three continents (U.S., Europe, and Asia), you'll be racing (or crashing!) for cash, which in turn can unlock new cars and tracks. And what a rush it is. This is one of those racing games that gets the sense of speed right, which is a welcome relief after playing such stinkers as California Speed for N64. However, the game isn't quite perfect, even as close as it comes, so let's examine, shall we?

1) Graphics. Outstanding, simply put. No slowdown, 60 fps framerates, highly detailed environments that are very distinctive of the continent they're on, and beautiful weather effects. Even though you're flying by the scenery, you still marvel at how good it looks. Mission accomplished here.

2) Sound. The game has a licensed soundtrack, meaning that you'll be hearing actual rock bands. There are a few bits of techno here and there, but it's mainly for menu music and such. What you'll mainly here are bands such as F-Ups ("Lazy Generation"). So your love for the music category will depend on your love for rock music. Thankfully, there are no "emo" songs on the soundtrack, so the music gets a thumbs-up from me. The music gets you going, which is what it SHOULD do in a racing game.

Sound effects are appropriate and have a lot of impact, especially in the crashes. The developers took great care into making crash sounds unique to each crash. You'll hear glass shatter, collisions with other cars, and even the explosions sound like anything but generic.

Also during the game is Striker, a radio DJ who gives you the lowdown on races and such. Thankfully, he isn't as grating as the announcer on SSX 3, but it is rather jarring when he interrupts music during a race to say something fairly worthless. And after listening to him for a week or so, he might start to get old.

3) Controls. No complaints here. Each button does everything it should. The R button allows you to boost (assuming you have enough energy in your boost bar), and if you boost for too long you'll start to have less control on the car, which adds a bit of strategy.

4) Gameplay. Burnout 3's World Tour mode is where you unlock stuff. You start in the U.S. and do a combination of both races (which are self-explanatory), face-offs (one opponent, which is usually tougher than a regular race), crash events (run your vehicle into traffic and score as much damage as possible), road rages (cause as many opponent cars to crash as possible), and time trials. After completing some of these, new continents will open up, and new events are constantly added with your progress, and often they vary the new events so you're never stuck on one continent for too long.

Cars are unlocked by gaining points in specific tallies, like crash points and specific techniques applied. Once you hit a set amount, a car is unlocked. You can also unlock cars by beating them in face-offs, and winning specific events. There are a wide variety of cars to unlock, from sports cars to SUVs to F1 race cars to jeeps to pick-up trucks to, well, you name it.

If there's a flaw with the otherwise well-constructed Tour Mode, it's that there are too many crash events. At first, this is the best part of the game, because hey, causing carnage that you couldn't do in real life is lots of fun. But get this: You have to do 100 of these events. So trust me, after about the halfway point, the events run together and it REALLY starts to lose its appeal. They don't vary the crash events enough other than a change of scenery, so that's a flaw.

And I guess you could make the argument that a lot of the tracks do tend to run together. After all you only have three continents, so a lot of the scenery will tend to give you deja vu. It would've been nice if the game had more continents to race through, like Australia or Africa. Imagine racing in the Outback or through a desert village.

Otherwise, Burnout 3 is a lot of fun. And it's a fairly challenging game, too. It's not the hardest or deepest racing game ever (Gran Turismo 3 and 4), but in some events it's a pain to get gold, or even silver. The time trials, especially. In order to obtain gold, you basically have to make a perfect run, which means boost constantly and no running into oncoming cars. Which is tough, because many areas have HEAVY traffic. And props to the game for remembering to reverse the direction of traffic in Asia, because they drive on the wrong side of the road there.

You can pick up Burnout 3 for $20, since it's a Greatest Hits title (and deservedly so). Do yourself a favor and pick up this speedy title up.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/05