Burnout 3: Takedown

"One of the best games of 2004"

You read right: Burnout 3 is one of the best games of the past year. That is truly saying something since the year was full of great titles like Halo 2, GTA:San Andreas, and Half-Life 2. As far as racers go this is easily the best of 2004 if not forever. Burnout has been a series that has been improving with every game and now it has hit perfection.

Graphics-10/10
The graphics are beautiful. The cars look great, as do the environments around them. When you crash your cars the doors fall off, windows break, hoods get messed up, and even the car itself looks bent. The really amazing thing about the graphics is the sense of speed. When your going 200 MPH, it looks like your going 200 MPH. its really indescribable.

Sound-8/10
The soundtrack in this game is hit and miss, with a few good songs by Yellow card and Jimmy Eat World. There is also the DJ, Striker, who is REALLY annoying, I would recommend turning him off at once. What makes the sound have such a good score are the cars and the crashes- they are great.

Controls-9/10
The controls are pretty normal for racers, which means there good. Right Trigger is go, Left Trigger is brake, and A is boost. The only problem is your fingers start to hurt after awhile.

Game play- 10/10
Another shining point in this game. In Burnout 3 its all about the crashes, and avoiding them/. There are plenty of fast cars to unlock, so this game will entertain you for a long while

In this game you can get take downs. A take-down is when you ram your rival so he crashes into the wall or another car. You can get after-touch take-downs by crashing and then having other cars hit you. You can hit L1 after your crash to steer while wrecking into other cars. Take-down get you massive boost and points, which lead to new cars and other rewards.

There is a lot of game modes to play. There is a race, which is just a race, road rage where you goal is to get a certain number of take-downs, and crash where you object is to crash into an intersection and cause as much damage as possible. You can play these on-line as well.

On-line-9/10
On-line in Burnout is another great feature. You can play all the one player modes including a team road rage where the blue team races and the red team chases them, trying to take them down. The only problem is that there is a bit of lag.

Bottom Line-10/10
Buy this game. Especially if you like racing or just wrecking cars. Its a great party game as well

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/05/05