Burnout 3: Takedown

"Take Me Out"

Few racing games appeal to me. I'm the kind of guy that loves violent, fast-paced action games like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry. Driving around in circles while perfectly breaking and turning is just boring. Why would I want to refine my turning when I could lop the heads off squads of heavily armored military troopers? I need mayhem and destruction! Thankfully there's Burnout 3: Takedown, a racing game as manly and gruesome as wrestling a fire-breathing grizzly bear while nude.

A major focus of Burnout 3 is driving recklessly to force your opponents to crash (aka a “takedown”). Just slam a rival into a wall, push them into oncoming traffic, or execute a bunch of other exquisite takedowns to witness your hapless victims crash and burn. Takedowns aren't just fun and exciting to perform, but they momentarily disable a rival. This allows you to overtake them while earning much needed boost.

As the name implies, boost gives your car a huge burst of manly speed, which is very important in climbing up to first place or making easy takedowns. Takedowns will not only completely fill your boost meter, but extend it up to four times its original length. In addition, there are other methods of replenishing your boost meter such as rushing into oncoming traffic or nearly hitting another car.

But it wouldn't be fair if your opponents couldn't also take you down. If you crash, you'll lose some of your boost meter's length and, like rival cars, you'll be momentarily out of the race allowing other cars to quickly overtake you. However, you do have one way to fight back: the aftertouch takedown. While crashing, you can slow down time and maneuver your vehicle into rivals' cars to eliminate them with you. Revenge has never been so manly.

Although a lot of Burnout 3's appeal comes from its devilishly fun takedown system, that doesn't mean the racing mechanics aren't up to par. You'll have plenty of tracks filled with plenty of twists, turns and traffic throughout cities, lakes, and jungles. By breaking while turning, you can execute the drift in order to make the turn while barely slowing down at all (normally your mph would plummet). My favorite part is the fact the game gives you room for error. You don't have to master drifting or avoid being taken down at all costs. Earning boost will help you recover from small mishaps you'll inevitably encounter whereas games like Gran Turismo require ridiculously precise breaking and turning to come out on top. Memorizing when to break on a course isn't manly, but boosting through a sharp corner at over 100 mph sure as hell is!

Speaking of speed, the game does a good job at giving a sense of it. The beautifully rendered buildings, mountains, and other surroundings zoom past you at such a blur that you really do feel like you're moving at such ridiculous speeds. Unfortunately this the source of one small problem because it's occasionally difficult to distinguish between something like a blurry grey truck and blurry pavement. Most racers aren't filled with anywhere near as much traffic as Burnout 3, and that can really screw your chances of finishing first if you keep inadvertently crashing. But hey, at least your shiny, polished car looks pretty before you smash it into a mound of contorted metal and broken glass!

Fortunately Criterion gave you plenty of opportunities to race, boost, and destroy your competition. In Tour mode, you'll have three maps filled with a variety of different events to compete in and earn bronze, silver or gold medals. In addition to the standard six car race and Gran Prix events (i.e. multiple races back to back), the game has a couple of interesting challenges. Eliminator may seem like a normal six lap race, but here the last car to finish the current lap explodes until it's just two vehicles competing at the final lap. While this may sound like nothing special, it does change your strategy when fewer and fewer opponents are available to takedown for a quick boost refill. If earning takedowns is what you do best, then Road Rage is right up your alley. You're given a limited amount of time to obliterate as many racers as possible, but you also can't crash too often or you'll explode into flaming wreckage.

There are a few events that just unfortunately suck. Crash events are easily the most plentiful and boring. You're given a small stretch of highway to slam into other drivers while collecting cash bonuses and cash multipliers in order to cause the most expensive, gigantic pileup possible. Just mindlessly crashing into things isn't very fun and frankly trying to nab tiny, little power-ups at the same time is frustrating. Thankfully each event takes all of 30 minutes to complete and there's nothing stopping you from simply skipping them. Unfortunately Burning Lap competitions aren't short. You'll have to boost through an entire lap while hoping not to crash. Incidentally earning a gold medal on Burning Lap is hard as Hell because it requires NEVER slowing down or crashing. But like Crash events, you can just avoid these and move on to the more exhilarating races.

Unfortunately some unmanly parts can't be avoided. While the AI is for the most part fine, there is one annoying thing that always happens if you pull out in first mid-race. From out of nowhere an opponent will boost-ram you from behind, and the chances of you not careening into a wall are slim (and then you'll probably have two or three rivals ahead of you upon recovery!). The only way to keep hold of first is to basically allow the AI to get in front of you and force them off the road (rinse and repeat until you see the finish line and then boost). In addition loading times aren't especially long, but feel as though they aren't any better than what a PS2 could do. I was most annoyed, however, by the lack of mini-map. Sometimes the leading racer gets really far ahead of everyone so that it's not even possible to win. When you're going for a gold medal, it would have been extremely helpful to know whether this has happened or not. Instead all you're given is a message like “You are 10 seconds behind!” That doesn't really tell me much.

Despite a few problems here and there, Burnout 3 is a solid arcade racer full of manly action as well as blazing speed. Even if you're not into the Crash and Burning Lap events, there's plenty of fun to be had earning gold medals in channeling your rage against a gauntlet of racers and competing in good old fashioned races (with tons of mayhem of course). But if you're considering picking up the PS2 version I must yell NOOOOOOOO! The soundtrack consists of mostly terrible pop-punk, emo and metalcore bands like My Chemical Romance, Yellowcard and Atreyu (thankfully there are three good artists on the soundtrack: The Ramones, Franz Ferdinand, and The Futureheads). This is a game that BEGS for a custom soundtrack*, which you'll only be able to do on an Xbox. There's nothing like slamming a rival into an 18 wheeler while listening to a manly guy like Chris Martin jam on the piano and sing “Clocks.”

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/08/06