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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.
Reverse the Flow
-anonymous (feel free to copy, steal, add to any and all parts)
This morning Donald Beardslee was murdered by lethal injection by the state of California. Lethal injection has become a form of ritual used by the state to remind the population that it is only the state who may control death. Donald Beardslee was used as a reminder that the state has control over us. However, government is limited in how it is able to enforce its control. It is very rare when the state can actually force us to do something. Instead psychological means must be used; mainly fear. Fear of punishment. Fear of being imprisoned or murdered. This fear of punishment is the reason we pay attention to the law at all. This fear is what allows to government to hold influence and control over our lives.
The purpose of the state is to allow a certain group to keep control over all others; control over consumption, control over production, control over life and death. This control is rarely pure. We almost always have choices. For example, we all have some limited amount of choice as to which boss is going to exploit our labor. The state almost never destroys our ability to chose. Instead it creates a very limited, controlled set of choices. By allowing us this limited spectrum of choice the state attempts to mask its nature.
Likewise, with the death penalty the state is attempting to mask its own nature. In hopes of appearing just and good natured, the state attempts to create a less-painful form of death. Those who are to be murdered by the state receive a last meal, clean clothes, etc. This is all done in an attempt to make the murder seem more humane. The state attempts to convince us that the death penalty is not murder, but justice. Those receiving this justice are treated as well as possible.
This, is all done to allow the state to claim that there is no other option. Once all the appeals have been rejected, there is nothing the government can do but murder. As in all other cases of state control, it is not the fault of the government, that's just the way things are. The state will claim it does not want to murder, but someone must punish those who commit crimes.
The government does not care about Beardslee. The individual is not important in this case. What is important is keeping a monopoly on state control. It is imperative to the state to keep acts of murder flowing in one direction. From the state to the population. the state must be able to end the lives the individuals, but individuals must not be allowed t threaten the state. Those who are not a part of the state, who are not murdering on behalf of the state are a threat to the monopoly because they might revers the flow of murder. Those individuals who commit murder against other individuals are only a worry because they may turn their actions on the state. Beardslee committed murder. Again the state creates an illusion of caring about justice for those who were killed. The state does not care about justice. Its goal is to create fear in the hearts of those who may otherwise take up arms against the state; those who may revers th flow of murder.
We who stand against the state must not allow the government to hold a monopoly over our lives and over our deaths. Let us, in fact, take power over the life and death of the state. The idea of eliminating the monopolies which the state holds brings fear to the powerful. So much effort is being taken to ensure the safety of George Walker Bush during the inauguration. It is the reversal of control that those in power are afraid of. It is not the control of the state that we seek, it is the power to destroy the state.
To eliminate the state, we must assault the monopolies it attempts to hold. We must attack the state anytime it attempts to create fear or control over us. Abolishing the death penalty will most certainly not rid us of the state. Government has other ways, and will create other ways to hold onto its control over the population. But for every reform which creates a limit on state power, which slows the control over one aspect of our lives (or in this case deaths), we are one step closer towards freedom.
No offense to anyone, but I don't think game reviews should be one of the 24 daily stories posted on slashdot.
*DrugCheese rants*
do this in real life, killing and maiming so that we can have more room for athletic people. (read: kill the fat slow obese people) fuck you all
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.