Burnout 3: Takedown
Electronic Arts Games
The Verdict: With great graphics and crashing scenes, it’s not likely that players will burn out playing this game.
4 of 4 stars
One of the major drives (no pun intended) in modern racing games is towards greater and greater realism-more realistic driving models, better graphics and greater selections of real world cars. “Electronic Art’s Burnout 3: Takedown,” for Xbox and Playstation 2, bucks these trends. While the graphics are excellent, there are no real world cars and the driving model is not overly complicated. In fact, calling Burnout 3 a racing game maybe something of a misnomer. Its more of a crashing game.
Like its name implies, “Burnout 3: Takedown”‘s gameplay revolves around getting takedowns-deliberately crashing opponents into walls, posts and incoming traffic. The game has four primary events-racing, time trials, road rage and crash. The first two of these are like similar events in any other racing game. Racing also adds the ability to take down opponents by ramming their cars into walls and traffic. Of course, said opponents can and will return the favor.
The other two modes, road rage and crash, center around crashing. In road rage, the objective is to crash as many opposing cars as possible. Most vehicles on the road are merely bystanders and all but slightest contact with them will result in your car crashing. However, opponents’ cars can both give and take heavy slams-though these slams will damage the player’s car, eventually leading to a damage critical condition where one crash ends the event. Crashing damages the player’s car as well, but it respawns until a damage critical crash.
Crash mode is pure destruction. Go as fast as possible, pick a target to start a chain reaction crash and ram it. The objective is to cause as much monetary damage as possible by crashing your car (or bus or dumptruck) into traffic. The crash levels are small, with a short course preceding the crash site. They are packed with items such as instant boost, which increases the car’s top speed (and keeps it from slowing down), explosions, score multipliers and the heartbreaker, a “poisoned item” that halves your score and overides any multipliers. Causing enough cars to wreck enables the “crashbreaker,” a player activated explosion that creates even more havoc than the original crash.
Different cars do different things when hit, depending on their mass, shape and payload. Tankers can explode, trailers dump their payloads and smaller cars can be propelled clear across a level. Any time an explosion occurs, the car wrecks or the car jumps a ramp, real time switches to crash time, a bullet time that allows the player to guide the wrecking vehicles into other cars.
Crash time is also present in the other single player modes, allowing the player to guide the crashed vehicle into opponents for “aftertouch takedowns.” While not as favorable as a regular takedown (to get an aftertouch requires crashing first), every little bit helps-especially in the more difficult races.
In addition to the standard throttle, brake and turning apparatus, “Burnout 3” adds boost. A quick shot of power that increases the car’s acceleration and its maximum speed.
However, in all events except the “Burning Lap”-a time trial with unlimited boost-boost is limited. It depletes as the player holds down the boost button. The boost gauge in the lower shows how much boost remains (up to a maximum amount). Excited by the takedown, the gauge is both filled and extended to up to four times its original size every time the player gets a takedown. Not surprisingly, it also fills a little bit when a player does a sexy manuver, like drifting or engaging in car on car contact, appropriately called “grinding.”
Multiplayer builds solidly on the single player game. Players can race each other, compete to be the first to get 10 takedowns in Road Rage or try to out-crash each other in the crash mode. For single console play, the game utilizes a two-player split screen mode for multiplayer races and Road Rage. Crash mode has several multiplayer events including a cooperative crash mode and a mode where players take turns to try and cause the most damage. Online player is also available through Xbox Live on the Xbox version-but we did not test it.
The game’s “World Tour Mode” presents goals in all events that unlock new cars and features. The mode is compelling in its own right, as the goals are usually challenging and some are not quite impossible, but the unlockables make it as addictive as unfiltered Camels. Admittedly, the more difficult goals can be frustrating, but dedication and practice make them possible. We playtesters tended to specialize in a particular event. Blake, prefering speed to mayhem, mastered the game’s racing and time trial modes, while others, including Craig, Adam and Josh, preferred to destroy property on a giant scale in crash mode. Personally, I like to bask in the afterglow of a 40-takedown streak in Road Rage.
In addition to the unique, but still engrossing and varied game play, Burnout 3 shows an quirky and imaginitive sense of humor. Slam into a van and the game announces “Damn Van!” while impacting a truck makes one “Totally Trucked!”
Good graphics and a clever premise, combined with challenging game play-both single and multiplayer-that stretches reality to allow players to feed their destructive urges makes Burnout 3: Takedown a standout game. Add the game’s soundtrack, which includes wide variety of full songs from bands like Finger Eleven and The Offspring, and its amusing humor, and it’s more than just a game, it is true entertainment.