Burnout 3: Takedown

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!