Burnout 3: Takedown

Simply flawless. Perfect soundtrack. Insane amount of content to unlock, challenges to beat. There's single events that sever as an almost endless mode. The boost mechanics are 10/10. Drifting feels great. This is arcade racing perfected.

The only flaw is that the multiplayer modes are a bit lacking. ie Road Rage is always first to 10 instead of being a battle for survival like the single events. That's it. And that's not really even a flaw, that's me just wanting more from this game because this game is extremely good.

I once drove 150 miles per hour in the New Mexican desert, empty highway, wide open space, lots of speed. What did I put on? "This Fire" by Franz Ferdinand. Why? Because of this fucking game. Highest recommendation. A must play.

Racing games, even the arcadey ones, can become unforgiving to try and learn. Gran Turismo will spit you into strict license trials, Ridge Racer will kick you onto the track and force you to learn how to slide, and Need for Speed will stick you against their rubberband AI and pestering cop cars. Mario Kart did a good job at trying to bridge this gap, by including power-ups as a way for lesser skilled players to have a chance at catching up to the pack. But Burnout 3 took that bridge to a new level. They turned that imperfection, the very act of crashing, and turned it into its own useful gameplay element. You're rewarded for crashing and causing mayhem with your opponents. Because of this, Burnout 3 ends up being a lot more accessible to racing game outsiders without losing its challenges and the sense of pure speed.

When I played Burnout 2 as a kid, the new 'crash mode' blew my mind. You crash the cars... ON PURPOSE? You could imagine my reaction once I played Burnout 3 for the first time and found out that crash mode has been expanded to include an entire HUNDRED of these challenges. And not only that, but the challenges themselves have been upgraded with various medals and multipliers. These can all be obtained by using the new 'aftertouch' ability, which lets the player control their car post-crash. This feature extends to the races as well, meaning the player can purposely steer their wreckage into opponents. Tagging an opponent during your own crash is known as an 'aftertouch takedown', and doing so is an easy way to get your entire boost bar refilled once you respawn!

Even without the new 'takedown' system, the physics behind every turn is already so much more satisfying to play with than any other racing game before it. The drifting in this game has WEIGHT. If you fling your car around a corner, it's going to feel like you're hanging on for dear life while inertia tries to pull your car away from the center of the turn. The boosting mechanic is also constantly daring you keep pushing the limits of your driving skill. Getting near misses with traffic, driving into oncoming traffic, and drifting all replenish your boost. Keeping this chaotic energy flowing will chain together your boost bars, to the point where if you're good enough, you can get around an entire lap while holding down the boost button. Of course, if speedy dare devil driving isn't your strength, you can get boost refills by destroying your opponents.

You have various ways to takedown your opponents, though the usual go-to will be ramming them into the wall. Though, you can also land on top of them, slam them into traffic cars, or tailgate them until they end up crashing themselves. Of course, now that the pursuit mode of Burnout 2 is gone, Burnout 3 has found an apt replacement. Instead of taking down a single racer as a cop car, you will now be constantly destroying opponents in the new ROAD RAGE mode. As long as you can keep destroying opponents, the timer will keep going, meaning that skilled players can keep this mode going on for a very long time.

These tracks are stretched out, usually featuring many winding corners, and little breathing room for you to break from your concentration. They're designed with crashes in mind, as walls, pillars, and other obstacles will be littered over these tracks in addition to all the traffic. Getting through laps without getting into an accident will make for quite the challenge for aspiring Burnout pros. Even more so if you plan on using the boost throughout the race. The car selection is also nice, though most of the vehicles generally drive the same as each other. The cars generally get faster throughout the game until you get to the ending where you have to tackle Formula 1 cars. You need to take use it to win the World Grand Prix and oh man... I crashed a lot on that one.

Burnout 3 is arcade racing perfection in my eyes. I find the later Burnout games to be massive fun as well, though Burnout 3 strikes that balance of great visuals, great presentation, and a memorable soundtrack to go with it. An odd, but memorable soundtrack. Its got From First to Last on it!

Thanksgiving 2005, my uncle got an Xbox 360 and later in the day he showed us Burnout Revenge, my introduction to the series. Seeing that the point of the game being to destroy and crash everything seemed nihilistic to say the least. Like, why would you do that to the poor city?

This is where the series started getting really, really good. That EA money may have taken the charm of the silent backdrop and original instrumentals out, but it's a small price to pay for a track and car line-up that is just insane. The event progression across the world always gives you something to do but cleverly tracks everything, Aftertouch makes Crash mode way more worthwhile and Takedowns only highlight how frenetic and aggressive the pure driving can get. This is where Burnout made a name for itself.

I went back to play a bit of this game in order to remember how it felt for this review, and i ended up playing through the entire thing again. Thats how good this game is at gripping the player. Burnout 3 is a racing game that focuses on speed and destroying your oponents in the race. Though there are a couple of modes from single race to versus, im gong to focus on the world tour mode since its the one i played the most.

So yea the campaign of this game grabs you like no other. The progression in amazing, as in each event you get a gold the game seemingly throws a new vehicle at you and opens a few new races. Since the races are so short, about 2 to 4 minutes, it keeps the player hooked in its reward cycle. The actual gameplay fortunatly is also excellent. I dont think there is another game that gives the sense of speed at this game. Using boost it goes so fast you barely have time to dodge incoming cars, which may be an issue in the top tier class types. The cars are arcadey and very enjoyable to drive, and mastering drifts around curves really satisfying. The game has always distinguished itslef from the rest with the ability to takedown enemies. Slamming them into walls or other vehicles is fun as ever, and the game rewards you by filling your boost deposit everytime you do this.

To please your ears you have DJ Stryker and his famous Crash FM. The actual DJ is a bit annoying to listen to, and i turn him off sooner than later. The tracklist is short and concise and it consists mainly on pop punk and very catchy alt rock. Its sugar for your ears, and in this setting it fits straight in with the adrenaline fueled arcadey fun of the game.

I can think of few other games that manage to provide the sense of fun as well as this one. Its just a blast to play, even today since its visuals held up pretty nicely.