Burnout 3: Takedown

Nearly every second of Burnout 3: Takedown should be followed with the same disclaimer in most car commercials – “Professional driver on a closed course, do not attempt.”  Part ferocity of a demolition derby, part insanity of a speederbike race through Endor, Burnout 3 is an incredible arcade racer and another smash hit from mega-publisher Electronic Arts.  Full of fantastic gameplay modes, Xbox Live support, and blistering graphics, Burnout 3 has set the new standard for arcade racers. 

Set in locales across the globe (okay, really only the United States, Europe, and the Far East) Burnout 3 isn’t your everyday racer.  Fans of the series will be ecstatic to know that this is easily the best title in the crash-happy franchise, encouraging twisting around corners as much as it does twisting chassis.  Bursting with innovative gameplay modes and Xbox Live support, this is THE game for drivers who want to take the ‘sim’ out of simple racing. 

Burnout functions largely on a risk/reward system, meaning the more gamers drive like NASCAR nasty Tony Stewart, the more bonuses they’ll receive.  These risks include driving into oncoming traffic, nearly missing other cars on the road, and powersliding or drifting around corners.  But the biggest rewards come from the game’s namesake – Takedowns.  Classic racing games may have cars jockey for position and try and beat opponents on an inside line around a turn.  Perhaps racers will draft behind rivals, gain speed, and shoot past them on a straight.  Maybe a little bump n’ grind is even allowed in the classics.  Not Burnout.  Burnout wants its racers to punish their opponents by sending them flying off the racetrack, slamming into trucks, or flipping end over end in spectacular fashion.  The rewards for risking it all?  Adding to the all important boost meter.  Boost is very important to the game, and vital in keeping opponents at bay.

The major portion of the single-player game is the Burnout World Tour mode.  This meaty mode is a series of challenging events divided into two main categories – race and crash events.  As these events are completed, new events open up around the world.  Each locale has several courses, and each course holds several events.  For example, beating a crash event in the Silverlake area may open up a race event in the Downtown area, or vice versa. 

Crash events are Mad Max’s wet dream.  These events have no finish line, no competitors, and only one rule: cause as much damage as you can with one crash.  Many of the scenarios challenge gamers to drive a car into a busy intersection and cause mayhem.  Now that’s what I call fun!  Bonus cash and multipliers litter the course to add a bit of strategy to the game, but the real enjoyment comes from watching six cars plow into a jackknifed tanker.  Once a set number of cars becomes involved in the pileup, players can initiate a ‘Crashbreaker’, which is effectively a self-destruct button of your burning wreck.  With a press of the B button, the wreck explodes and flies into the air – the catch is gamers have limited control over the wreckage and can send the flaming pile of metal into more traffic or pick up the valuable multipliers on the road.  The camerawork is quite effective in showing cars crash into others as drivers maniacally watch the result of their handiwork, like a mad scientist unleashing an abomination on the populace.  Once everything is settled, Burnout 3 switches into a nice flyby mode, spanning the course of destruction from an elevated view and calculating the amount of damage that was done.  Sure it sounds stupid, but I challenge anyone out there to stop from giggling like a schoolgirl at the site of the vehicular mayhem. 

To make the game even deeper, race events have several subcategories.  Because it seems mandatory, several standard race modes are included. But the slight variations on the tired race mode are the real joys for Burnout 3.  In Road Rage, gamers are given the challenge to acquire as many takedowns as they can within a certain time and car damage limit.  Certain takedown prerequisites are set at the beginning of the race, and drivers must meet these numbers before time runs out or their car is totaled.  Eliminator pits gamers against a field of rivals in a race – with a twist.  The driver in last place after each lap is eliminated from the race.  Other race modes include one-on-one Face Off, time trial Burning Lap, and race series Grand Prix.  Of course even the standard races have furious metal-grinding action, complete with Burnout 3’s signature spectacular wrecks.

What makes Burnout 3 so accessible to everyone are its simple controls and forgiving physics.  There’s no option for manual or automatic transmission… just hold down the accelerator and punch it.  Of course some basic driving skills are necessary to shave off vital seconds and get the gold medal, but there aren’t any complicated downshift-release the gas-handbrake-gas-upshift combinations necessary here.  The element of speed is so incredibly important to Burnout 3, and the developers have preserved this sensation with soft physics.  Obviously a car hits a big rig truck head-on, it’ll turn into a crushed tin can.  But if the car hits a wall at a slight angle, it will usually bounce off and get right back on track.  This is something that the developers made the right call on – keep the action going and make the game playable by just about anyone. 

Because Burnout 3 is such a good-looking game, splitting the screen for multiplayer isn’t the best way to play with other people.  Thank the lord for Xbox Live.  Burnout 3 on Xbox Live is a pretty good way to take out pent-up aggressions by crashing other gamers across the globe.  Online game modes include Single Race, Road Rage, Team Crush, Double Impact, and Party Crash.  Road Rage online pits two teams (up to eight players total) in an elimination style-event… Blue team tries to outrun the Red team, and Red team tries to takedown the Blue team.  Party Crash is a multiplayer crash event, with each participant competing against each other.  Each car runs its individual trial, and the damage totals are calculated.  Team Crush sees two cars working together to generate the most damage, and Double Impact has two cars competing against each other to cause the most damage.  While these modes are very fun to play, a game of Tag or Kill the Carrier ala Midtown Madness 3 would have been a blast. 

The visuals in Burnout 3 are spectacular.  From the presentation to the detailed levels, there’s little to complain about the aesthetics of Burnout 3.  The mountainsides of the United States, rustic urban architecture of Europe, and neon-clad glitzy cities of the Far East all look positively smashing.  The detail on the cars, although they’re not licensed cars, is very good and the real-time damage modeling works very well, particularly during axel-busting wrecks. 

The sounds of Burnout 3 are great in the right spots.  Because the game is centered around crashes, it’s really the crashes that need to sound great, and they do.  Shattering glass dominates the audio (who doesn’t love shattering glass?), and it’s accompanied by a symphony of metal-to-metal clashing, thunderous explosions, and whiny car alarms.  To make things even more dramatic, takedowns are slow-mo’d and the sound is suddenly interrupted – the hard rock music stops and atmospheric sound effects take over.  It’s a simple addition that makes taking an opponent down… fun!  As for that hard rock soundtrack, it’s very fitting to the fast paced action and is well put together. 

While Burnout 3 is very worthy of praise, there are a few things that keep Burnout from being an all-time classic.  Burnout 3 is all about gorgeous crashes… WHERE ARE THE REPLAYS!?  There is a basic replay at the end of crash events, but nothing that the user can control.  If I knock another car over the guardrail and into a tree, sending the wreckage spinning like a Frisbee, I am going to want to see that baby again… over and over.  Not going to happen in this edition.  It’s a major oversight that will hopefully be fixed in the future.  One game element that can be considered both a blessing and a curse is the “rubberband” action on the computer-controlled cars.  The rubberband action I’m talking about is a feature in some racers that makes rivals speed up or slow down depending on how the player is driving.  Simply put, every race will be competitive.  That’s great when you’re having a terrible race (although not too gratifying), but terrible when you’re seemingly blowing the competition away.  There’s nothing wrong with a little rubberband action, but Burnout 3 makes it a little too obvious. 
 

Gameplay: 9.5

Burnout 3 is all about the guilty pleasure we all get from seeing a major car wreck.  The gameplay is nearly flawless, combining variety with intense action, making Burnout 3 ridiculously addictive. 

Graphics: 9.0

Given all the fast-paced action, the graphics hold up remarkably well.  There’s definitely a Need For Speed Underground look about the game, which is a good thing.  The backdrops are so well detailed, that drivers may catch themselves looking at sailboats cruising around the Marina… that is until the driver runs into an oncoming payload truck at 100 mph.

Sound: 8.8

Ahhhhh… I love the sound of shattering glass in the morning.  Solid all the way around.

Difficulty: Easy

Burnout 3 is the epitome of pick-up-and-play.  Accelerate with the right trigger, brake with the left, and boost with A.  Capiche?

Concept: 9.4

Everyone loves fast cars.  But everyone loves fast cars crashing even more!

Multiplayer: 8.2

Surprisingly the multiplayer is not as fun as it should be, but the Xbox Live portion is slightly entertaining. 

Overall: 9.3

Burnout 3 is one of the best arcade racers of all time.  It’s instantly fun to play for just about anyone.  The game’s speed progresses from Andy Dick insane to Charles Manson insane, always pushing the envelope and always keeping gamers glued to their TV, white knuckling their controllers.  With a nearly flawless combination of graphics, gameplay, and gorgeous crashes, Burnout 3 is a must play for anyone with a need for speed.