If this were a themed review, the entire page would be a blur with just the odd word standing out here and there. That’s what Burnout 3 is like. It’s so fast all of the time, you never get to see the beautifully built worlds in any great detail. Burnout 2 was rapid, but Burnout 3, subtitled 'Takedown' is so fast it will set your TV on fire...
The main game mechanic has changed a bit from the previous two games; whereas in Burnout 2 you gained boost from driving on the wrong side of the road or doing drifts and jumps, you now fill your boost gauge by taking down opponents (your boost can also be filled up in the traditional way too). When you smack/ram/shove/punt an opponent off of the road, you get a 'Takedown!' bonus, which extends and fills your boost bar, and the bar can be extended three times until it reaches the maximum size. Naturally, you can do various combos and different attacks to rack up loads of points and awards, which unlock more of the game. If you takedown a few cars straight after each other, you get "Rampage!" bonuses and if you drive behind a car for long enough you'll perform a "Psyche Out!" move, which means they get scared of you and twitch and crash, awarding you with another 'Takedown' bonus. Pulling all of these moves off during a race is incredibly satisfying and enjoyable, and totally changes the game. Where before in BO2 it was just about avoiding the cars and coming 1st, in B3 it’s essential to smack the enemy cars off the road to gain boost (depending on the type of race) – this makes the game much more involving and varied than ever before, and really adds to the racing.
The main part of the game is the 'Burnout 3 World Tour', where you start in 'Compacts' (think “Honda Civic”) and the events are set in USA (you unlock further events in Europe and The Far East later). There are various game modes to play through; some hot lap and point-to-point based racing and Crash mode are taken from the previous games (Crash mode is integrated into the main game map now rather than being a separate mode), and some are new to the series. If you didn't play Crash mode in Burnout 2, you basically smash as many vehicles as you can for money (it's pure genius) and it now allows you to steer your wrecked car for a short time after crashing ("Impact Time" - more genius) and then even explode it if a required number of wrecks are caused ("Crashbreaker"), allowing you to potentially extend your score combo by causing even more mayhem! New modes include Eliminator; where over 5 laps, the person in last place at the end of each lap is eliminated - this is very tense and the AI is incredibly aggressive as you fight each other for the lead and Takedown bonuses.
Another new mode is Road Rage, where you have a set amount of time (usually a few minutes) to 'Takedown' as many cars as possible. The target vehicles are indicated by a blue arrow above them. You gain medals here by meeting the Takedown amount required for each award (Gold, Silver, or Bronze). This mode is fantastic fun, and perhaps is the best mode to show off Burnout 3’s dazzling visuals as well as the new game mechanic and enhanced physics.
At times it seems like you unlock a new car, or a pack of cars, or a new racing series, or some sort of reward after virtually every single event. Being regularly (and heavily) rewarded with unlocks this way really keeps your interest in the game up - the game really wants you to enjoy yourself, play more and more, and to unlock everything in the process. This is pretty much the complete opposite of every other racer out there, and it’s very welcome indeed.
The multiplayer part of Burnout 3: Takedown is pretty extensive, with the main addition being, of course, Xbox Live multiplayer. Up to six people can play together in single race or team takedown events (red team chasing blue team for a set time to try and take them out), or up to eight players in Crash Party mode (where you take it in turns to create as much damage as possible, after which the winning crash is viewed by everyone at the end). Team Takedown is great fun, and it’s nice to see the online mode has been thought about and isn’t just straight racing. The improvised ‘cat and mouse’ game people used to play in PGR2 was fantastic fun, and Criterion have cleverly put a proper mode in that feels very similar to that (but MUCH faster).
Graphically, the Burnout series has always been of high quality, especially Burnout 2 which looked fantastic, with fancy lighting and particle effects filling the screen up whilst running at a rapid sixty frames per second - and never slowed down. Burnout 3 is even more impressive, with highly detailed vehicles (both racers and traffic) and amazing looking trackside detail such as buildings, bridges and the fantastic L-train and monorail systems which feature in various tracks. Particle effects are now improved upon from Burnout 2, with more sparks, more screen blurring, and a very neat heat haze effect when initiating the boost. Again, the game screams along at sixty frames per second and I still haven't seen an instance when the frame-rate drops - a very impressive feat. Looking at other videogames out there that are doing much less on-screen and struggling to keep the game running at 30fps, you have to wonder what developers are doing wrong (or how talented Criterion are). The time has come for people to stop turning their noses up at Renderware.
In the sound department, you’re in for a treat too, especially if you have a Dolby Digital setup. When you hit the boost button, your centre speaker sounds like a furnace as the fire is roaring from the flaming boost meter on-screen. Cars passing you at 200mph sound awesome, and the noises from the crashes as you smash and crunch loads of cars up is great (and scares the crap out of your neighbours). Then you have the Mustang-type muscle cars in the game with big V8 engines in them, and they sound very satisfying. The gear change effect is great too, with a large chunky noise as the game engages the next gear. I have never heard a racing game sound better than this, ‘sim’ or otherwise.
Unfortunately, the game does have a few niggles which takedown (sorry) the quality a bit. For a start, there is no replay feature for the racing. You'd think a replay feature would be very high on the list of things to put in a game like this - causing massive crashes and going mental with 'Takedowns' is one of the most visually impressive things you can do in a videogame, but after the race is over, these are lost forever, often leaving you gutted because you’d loved to have seen an incident again or shown someone else (such a strong feature in the much-maligned Driv3r). Another small niggle with the game is the inability to change your controller setup. For Xbox, you are forced to use the L&R triggers for brake and accelerate, and A for boost. Now in a game where precise control of the throttle and brakes are required triggers are perfect, but for a game like Burnout in which less subtle throttle movements are all that are mostly needed, I much prefer buttons. Whilst the default setup works perfectly well (although your right index finger will ache after some of the longer, 'foot to the floor' races), they could have at least given us the option to change it to our own personal preference...
The music in the game is an acquired taste, and although initially I didn’t like it, I warmed to it after 10hrs or so. I left the DJ on too, as it reminded me of Ridge City FM, just more annoying and “EA’d” up. I thought they both fitted in with the game quite nicely, however for the many people who can’t get on with the music (and the annoying EA onscreen track listing which blocks out the boost gauge temporarily), you can use the Xbox’s custom soundtrack option to add your own music. Just remember that every time you play the game you have to set them up as it resets back to EA’s soundtrack music again.
I feel I have to mention the quality of the online sessions we’ve had; it’s best described as rather “flakey”, with you randomly getting your game closed down or the connection just dropping and not letting you join friend's games for no apparent reason. I even got a "Your gamer tag account has been suspended" message on one occasion! (it let me log in again straight afterwards though). The instability of the online game is very annoying as you can be in a middle of a race event and at the results screen the server will just close down and throw you back to the lobby or even the game’s front end. Chatting to many people within the lobby about this, it would seem to be a problem everyone is suffering from. It appears that the EA servers can’t cope with the demand from everyone wanting to play the game online, as earlier in the week before the PAL release the servers were coping much better, so it’s not all bad, just not very good when it’s busy. Perhaps they'll add more servers, but for EA’s first major Xbox Live release, you'd think it would be solid from the start – once you’re racing the game plays like a dream, with few instances of lag and excellent voice communications.
Apart from the Xbox Live code, the other negative points are very minor, and don’t affect the game in any way – it’s just a shame that features such as replays weren’t in. Hopefully that’s something they can put in the next Burnout. Overall, Burnout 3: Takedown is an outstanding videogame in almost every respect. It’s so enjoyable to play, so damn fast and tense – it won't let you blink until you have unlocked everything, and got all Golds and are racing your very own World Circuit Racer through the streets. The game is huge too – I am over 30 hours in now and still have races to unlock. It makes the relatively short Burnout 2 look tiny in comparison. Replayability is good too, as you’ll go back for some more of the Crash mode, or perhaps a quick aggressive race in Road Rage mode. For everyone that is a fan of the series or arcade racers in general, this is an absolutely essential purchase, and it’s so nice to see the arcade style racer is still very much alive and kicking, and with a certain SEGA arcade classic sequel coming to Xbox soon, we have much more of it to come. Go buy Burnout 3 now, you’ll love it.
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