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Review: Burnout 3 - Takedown
- Title: Burnout 3: Takedown
- Developer: Criterion Games
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- System: Xbox
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 9/10
Let me say something straight off: I don't play racing games. I don't play sports titles in general. My enjoyment of Burnout 3: Takedown stems from the fact that it is only a racing game in the loosest sense of the term. What Criterion has done with this title is to make racing incidental to the purpose of the game. The purpose of Burnout 3 is twofold: Go Fast and Hit Stuff.
Burnout's premise is that in racing "Risk = Reward", a catch phrase the radio-style announcer repeats often. The reward in this case is Boost, the game's consumable go-fast juice that increases your rate of travel from merely jaw dropping to truly ludicrous speeds. You obtain Boost by taking risks such as driving on the wrong side of the road, initiating near-misses with other vehicles, catching air, and skidding around corners. The primary way that you obtain Boost, and the way you increase the capacity of the Boost-meter, is through Takedowns.
Takedowns are awarded when you take out another vehicle in a race. This can be accomplished in numerous ways, from grinding another car into a wall to tail-gating him into crashing (called a "Psyche Out"). These Takedowns fill and expand your Boost meter, allowing you to go faster and more effectively crash other vehicles. This leads to an amusing cycle of destruction that makes even a simple race through the Italian wine country into a Mad-Maxian experience. When you are taken out (or kiss that oncoming pillar) you're penalized some Boost, but the game rewards you for impressive flips and slides. Holding the Boost button post-crash allows you to view your explosive re-entry in Impact Time, a bullet-time-like slow-mo. Impact Time can even net you more Takedowns, called Aftertouches, as you direct your flaming heap into fellow racers. A Tony Hawk style breakdown of your crash ("Into Truck + Triple Somersault + 350' Sidewall Slide") can also net you some boost to refill your meter once you're done crashing.
The key is that Takedowns and being taken out, rather than things to be avoided, are the core of the game. Great looking damage is applied to the (non-licensed) vehicle models, with shattering windshields and flying debris the norm for any given race. Unlike some racing games where a vehicle can be thrown off of a cliff without suffering a scratch at the speeds you move in Burnout 3 you can twitch wrong and blow apart your vehicle on a fencepost. The sense of movement and danger is conveyed through excellent graphics and extremely responsive controls.
The overall mood of the game is accentuated by the music selection. Like many sports games they've done lately EA has opted to include a selection of name-brand music with their title, allowing you to race to bands such as The Ramones, Jimmy Eat World, and Ash.
Beyond the basic building blocks of the game, Criterion provides you with a panoply of cars, tracks, and things to run into. Events are spread out over three areas: the US, Europe, and the Far East. Within these areas are several themed courses which allow you to experience high speeds in places such as the California coast, downtown Chicago, downtown Rome, and a busy Hong Kong street-maze.
I say events because straightforward races are just one of the activities you can find yourself completing in Burnout 3. Road Rage pits you against other cars in a challenge to take out as many opponents as you can in an allotted time. Timed laps force you to traverse a course under a certain time to prove yourself worthy the gold, silver, or bronze. And then, most deliciously, there is Crash Mode.
Crash Mode is the stand out event type in the game as well as being the most straightforward. You start at the beginning of a course, rev up to speed, and throw your vehicle into traffic. Your goal is to cause as much destruction as possible and rack up as much damage as you can in dollar amount form. Spinning coin icons add to your totals and icons representing cash amount multipliers float in challenging positions on the course. These add a strategy element into the wanton destruction of all you see before you. This is accentuated again by Impact Time, which allows you to savor the metal crunching results of your careful planning and permits you to guide your vehicle through the air.
A Hong Kong based track was host to a particularly memorable crash for me. After the countdown I sped out of the start, laying down rubber behind me. Looking ahead I saw the Boost icon coming up quickly. In Crash Mode there are icons that instantly fill your Boost Bar and as I sped through it my speedometer leapt from 115 up into the 160+ range. Other racing games say you're going that fast, but the presentation of Burnout 3 really reinforces the awesome speeds at which your vehicle goes. Boosting hard I aimed directly at the small ramp they'd thoughtfully provided just before the busy intersection I was heading towards. I launched off of the ramp and Impact Time took over, allowing me to see the huge tanker truck plowing through the intersection at high speed. The small coupe I was driving entered the tank of the truck just behind the cab from above in a fiery conflagration that shook the room. Impact Time quit and the now burning and blackened coupe flew upside down through the air into a pillar, taking out a pair of the tiny TukTuk cars so common in this area. As my coupe landed the camera pulls back to reveal the devastation in the intersection, where the tanker explosion has ripped open the frames of several small cars and caused a few others to slide over into the oncoming lane. Another truck, this one with a long trailer laden with boxes, slams hard into the wreckage and adds flying cargo to the confusing pile. At that point the camera swings back to my already burning wreck and informs me that if I hit the B button I'll be able to use the Crashbreaker. After a certain number of wrecks are accumulated in a Crash Mode session, you're allowed to effectively detonate your vehicle to add more burning metal to the experience. This explosion also allows a second go at Impact Time and can be the key to hitting out of the way points icons. Always willing to destroy things, I hit B and with an explosive *wham* my vehicle goes from a burning cinder to a rapidly expanding vapor cloud. The largest chunk is the one I have control of and I guide it through the air with my control stick directly into a score multiplier icon, netting me a huge amount of cash.
Moments like these accumulate more lasting rewards as the game plies you with an endless string of medals, trophies, new cars, and (most amusingly) headlines in the newspaper. You can specifically go for these rewards but I found during the course of play that cool things(tm) would just organically happen, netting me accolades as a byproduct to my fun.
Beyond this rich tapestry of single player speed hedonism, the game is fully Xbox Live compatible. Though there aren't hundreds of games available like you'd find with Halo 2 there are still plenty of Burnout 3 players to be found on the service. Online games come in many different flavors, from straight matches to series of races, time trials, crash contests, and battle races where one team tries to take out the other team before they reach the finish line. The Xbox Live service does the game full justice with very little lag and extremely tight response.
The only complaint that I can offer up is that the game is extremely to the point. There isn't a create your own racer mode or any building features for the vehicles you're offered. It's a small thing, though, as Burnout does what it does very very well. I highly recommend this game to speed lovers, Hot Wheels aficionados, and anyone who has found themselves on a go-kart track saying "Maybe I'll give him just a tap."
Screenshots are from EA's official Burnout 3 site, ©2005 Electronic Arts Inc.
... Playing if for a few months, great game, low morality, big fun ...
I don't know why so many reviews I've read say it's for the Xbox and not the PS2. It's equally as great on the PS2 and the online play is free no less. What the hell?
It's a great game none the less.
Put an audio CD into your xbox, and go into the audio menu, copy all of the tracks to it's own album. It'll copy them over, rinse and repeat with as many cds as you want. Once you have all of your music on the xbox hard drive, you can create a new album, and copy over all of the appropriate driving songs into it. Label that album burnout3 or something appropriate.
Once in the game, go into your profile section, then to settings, there should be an option that says EA TRACKS. You can change the sound track of the game from the one that they give, to any of your albums, including your custom burnout3 one.
Well, if you've got the X-Box version, you can rip music to the hard drive and use custom soundtracks while playing instead of having to put up with the default soundtracks.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Despite the crappy review, you owe it to yourself to check the game out. It's an awesome adrenaline racer.
As to how many courses - I haven't bothered to count, but there are probably a dozen true courses that you play in various configurations, taking different turns, going different directions, etc. Lots of cars, though a lot of them play similarly.
As for replay though - don't worry about being bored with it after 6-7 hours, unless you don't likea arcadey adrenaline racers with spectacular crashes. Even then, it's probably worth a rental.
Does this review belong on the front page? Nope. It barely belongs on the Games page, since the game is so old.
There are a couple differences between Burnout 2 and 3. The main one that stuck out for me was the use of the "boost", as you have to fill up your bar entirely before you can even use it. Burnout 3 on the otherhand allows you to use it at anytime, no matter how full the bar is.
The addition of impact time after a crash makes the game play drastically different. 3's Crash Mode in general, making you plan out your routes based on the numerous powerups and crash-breakers, giving you more control over how you'll cause mayhem. With 2 you just launch your car and watch everything unfold, 3 is a lot more interactive in this respect.
Finally, there won't be a Burnout 3 released for the Gamecube. I did some heavy research into this a couple months ago after I first played it for the X-box, and was disappointed to learn EA does not have any plans on releasing it for the cube.
They're difficult at first, but well worth it as the gameplay goes on past the 40th hour or so.
I was pleased to find that the technique racing was just as effective as most.
A few things I've found help in the races: Remember that you have both brakes and "neutral" on your analog dpad. You can make some marvelously sharp turns by simply letting go of the gas/brake entirely for a moment.
Likewise, regardless of the car, your handling is always better if you aren't boosting. Always. Even for some reason in cars that go no faster with boost than without it. (The Dominator Sports/Super, the racing carts.)
Especially in the faster races, learn to steer only as much as you need to; learn to take your speed down in appropriate turns. Master, master, master those drift turns too; they'll chop seconds off your lap time.
Mind that with the high-performance vehicles, the boost serves more to help you accelerate than making any real difference on your top speed. Pulse the boost, that way your car won't get stuck in a gear (as it sometimes will, since it can't shift if your revs are too high), and hence you'll get to your top speed faster.
In the last races, yes, the difficulty is nearly insane. The computer, weakling and pitiful in the Compact series, becomes Hannibal Lecter behind an airfoil in the cart series. There's really little you can do about that except outrace them at that point; forget brawling.
Lastly, for burning laps and most time-sensitive races, just restart if you crash more than once. You won't make the gold time, period. Perhaps one time out of a hundred you can have two crashes and still make a time limit, the rest of the time, you're hooped. So in those races, avoidance of traffic is key. Accept that there are times you'll have to hit the brakes to survive; take the slowdown time-penalty over a much more severe crash-penalty.
I can't help you much with the Retro Roadster though. I swear to god someone greased the wheels just before you start it up. My record drift turn with that sucker is 1612 feet. My next highest drift turn with any other vehicle is 800 feet.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
...so that argument doesn't really hold water.