Burnout 3: Takedown

"Aggresive, nasty, and tons of fun."

Keep in mind, as you read this review, that I am not a racing game fan. Somehow, driving in circles doesn't do it for me. On rare occasions, I delve into titles like Ridge Racer and Wipeout but all in all, not a racing game fan. Maybe it's the old school in me but todays racers keep pushing for more and more realism. They boldly keep adding in better physics and more realistic handling to appease the mighty car guys.

Well, I'm not a car guy. I'm not the kind of person who wants my game manual to come with an "Intro To Circuit Racing" manual written by a world famous driver school. I'm the kind of guy who wants a maximum of 4 constantly used buttons (Gas, Brakes, Hand Brakes, and Turbo. Maybe even a little "fire weapon") and a gameplay system easily learnable within the first 30 minutes. Why? Because maybe I wanna race. I want fast action, balls to the wall thrills. I don't want the hassle of worrying about the suspension on each tire to shave an extra second off a lap time which has no traffic or fellow racers. Simply put, if your racing game has me spending more than 30% of my time off the racing course, there is something wrong.

Which is why the Burnout series fits me. It's fast action, full throttle, and very easy to control. More importantly, it's not trying to be a realistic sim, which I love them for. It is, simply put, a fun game. If you are one of those people who "need" the realism, try this anyway. One of my friends, a GT fanatic, spent the better part of the first hour complaining about the lack of realism here only to complain when I had to get some sleep and needed to end our 5 hour racing spree. This may be a game for you even as you cringe at the thought of the following "realistic" deterrents.

-Zero licensed cars. That's it. None, nadda, zip, zilch. To me, this is an advantage. But some complain. No creative points goes to a company that licenses out the Porsche name to throw in their racer.

-Ability to control your vehicle after a wreck. Strategic? Yes, but definitely not realistic.

-Being able to continue a race after fully totalling your car. You will wreck, it's part of the game. Fortunately, the punishment isn't severe.

Still with me? Have I successfully convinced you that GT4 and Fornza this is not? Good. Because those games cannot even remotely hold a candle to the competitive carnage this game offers.

Gameplay-10
There are basically two forms of gameplay here. Racing and Crash. I'll go into the crash mode here since it is significantly shallower than the race mode.

You basically have a car which runs through a gauntlet of various cars and targets. Your job is to grab icons and create the largest, most carnage happy scene of death and twisted vehicle rubble possible. Sound simple? Well, first icon you need to nab is the boost. After that, you have various other icons. Which add a very deep experience for such a shallow concept.

-Bonus Money: Rewards just that.
-Heartbreaker: Cuts final score in half
-Multipliers: Doubles or Quads final score
-Crasher: Instantly detonates the bomb in your car

Now attached to these icons is a further level of depth. They come in two forms. Aftertouch and Crashbreaker. After touch is when you hold down the turbo button after a wreck and have the ability to "steer" your wreckage to a strategic spot. This could be useful for grabbing in air icons or moreso, the second option. Crashbreaker is a stage has a set number of involved vehicles before it becomes active. When this number is reached, you can detonate your own vehicle. Now imagine smashing into the side of a bus, causing massive havoc but then steering your spinning debris into the front of a fuel tanker right before detonating yourself along with the tanker to cause even more damage. It's that kind of fun.

Racing, however, holds a bit more depth. More depth just because of how many modes on top of modes there are. Keep in mind, none of these feel like they were tagged on. There still exists the standard racing along with elimination, face-offs, circuits, and even my favorite... Road Rage. Now despite hating racing games, due to the nature of my friends, I play almost all the new ones. I drag them into Timesplitters... it's only fair. But in all these games, I have never seen such actively aggressive AI. They will bump, rub, bash, crash, nudge, jam, slam, and do their damnedest to kick your ass. On top of this, when you start doing the same to them, you become an even bigger target because of the "rival" system. They will start targeting you specifically if they notice you've taken them down. Now in standard races, this isn't as big of a deal. But only in standard. Face-Offs are aggressively dangerous and it's a challenge to merely keep up despite how many times to "take down" your opponent. In Elimination, these efforts seem even worse. I've yet to beat an Elimination course without a minimum of 15 takedowns when all is said and done. In one, it was even 37. And then there is the Road Rage mode. No places, no lap times, just to challenge to rope as many takedowns before time, or critical damage, renders you obsolete.

Takedowns. What an interesting concept. Everyone has done it in this game or the other. No other game brought it to the forefront or even gave it a name. It's nudging your opponent into a sidewall. Boosting their backside into an oncoming bus. Or simply continually boosting on their rearend until they lose control. Hell, I was taking people down all the way on RC Pro Am. But the situation here is a focus. Nothing is more exhilirating than pushing your opponent into a concrete pillar just in time to boost the guy in front into an oncoming garbage truck. And despite how much you want to avoid it, Takedowns are essential. In the older games, drving recklessly was useful enough to earn Boost. Now? You have to bump, slam, nudge, and grind your opponent if you have any hopes of keeping a full boost bar. Which means that the guy in 1st place is in a significant position of handicap since the boost oppurtunities are limited but also bumps from behind steal boost. And did I mention? Takedowns also increase the amount of boost you can keep in reserve and also completely replenish you boost supply. Even if you're in last place, aggresively taking down your opponent can give you a damn good chance of taking first in a relatively short amount of time.

Graphics-10
You've seen the shots, the movies, hell... maybe even the commercials. Let's just put it this way, they own. Particles scream the pain of a well done paint jobs. Shrapnel litters the area of the crash scene. Explosions teach you the virtue of playing with gas trucks. Yes, all this and more. And zero to no drawline distance helps. If one complaint was to be had is that seeing oncoming traffic during the day is a tad difficult at first.

The menu system, however, has been uberEAified. Look, if you enjoy EA, that's your business. Personally, to me anyway, they crowd everything. Every little corner has to have something going on. Burnout 3 is no exception. From the tracklist to the stage select. It's crowded, crowded, crowded. It's easy to navigate, but still a much less busy menu system would have been appreciated. But I guess this is the price you pay of being part of the MTV generation. Everything has to dance, hop, or move to keep people interested. It's a minor complaint to be certain but one which needs mentioning.

Sound-10
Keep in mind I give sound a perfect score because of two reasons.

1. With XBox, a custom soundtrack is available for creation and I advise everyone to do so.

2. Crash Radio can be turned off.

I'm uncertain if it was EA that pushed Crash Radio into the game or not but it gets on your nerves very quickly. And the worst part is, it's integrated with EA's tracklist. So someone, either at EA or Criterion, decided it was annoying enough to allow people the ability to turn it the hell off. Maybe it was after the infamous squeaky dog toy battle amongst the game testers or the complete and total self destruction of the lead tester that lead to this decision. Whichever way, it was wise. Rockstar, it seems, still has the best, most thought out and non-annoying, radio in a game. EA fell flat on their ass with this. Majority of the quips are predictable and simpleton level of humor. "They just got done clearing the last crash so it's time to make some new ones." Okay... whatever. The problem of crash radio also comes with the fact that these remarks are timed at certain intervals of a song, or so it seems. So at certain point of the soundtrack, with Crash Radio disabled, you'll get radio tuning static which signifies that good old "I'm fifty but still cool" guy was supposed to speak here. In other words, it taints the EA songlist as well. It's not immediately noticable but you'll hear it soon enough.

Meanwhile, the sound effects, screaches, grinds, and cruches are all spot on. And as I said, you can make your own soundtrack. Somehow, this game begs for Voodoo People by The Prodigy.

Closing Statements
This is not your realistic racer, nor should it be. If everything was realistic, this game just wouldn't function as fun. No 14 step programs to learn how to drift. No drivers license test before you can race a car you bought. Simply put, this is fast action, aggressive, arcade style racing. And after all, there's a reason why this should appeal to you. Even the most hardened car buff enjoyed watching the car chases in films like Gone in 60 Seconds or Italian Job. This is your chance, fanboy. This is your big ass car chase on a little plastic disc. Starring, of course in an introductory role, yourself.

And that, in essence, is what gaming is supposed to be about.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/10/04