Burnout 3: Takedown

Burnout 3 is one of the few racing games that you can easily recommend to everyone. You don’t have to worry about setting up your car or simulation physics or funky co ntrols so literally anyone can pick it up and find it immediately enjoyable. The game is fast, frantic, satisfying, and extremely fun both online and offline. Burnout 3 is a must play title that is addictive enough and has such tremendous replay value that it deserves a spot in just about any Xbox owners’ library.

Burnout 3 is a huge game and the single player mode alone will likely keep you hooked for weeks. The game features 40 tracks split between three cities and nearly 70 cars. The cars aren’t licensed, but they look very similar to the imports, exotics, and SUVs that you see in other games. There are a ton of race types as well. Elimination races kill off the last place driver each lap until there is only one left. Road rage races require you to cause your opponents to crash as much as possible. Burning lap races are standard time trials but the gold medal times are pretty much insane. There are also straightforward races as well.

What makes the racing so fast and so fun is the boost meter. Every time you intentionally bump an opponent, narrowly miss a traffic car, slide around a corner, catch some air, or drive into oncoming traffic, you gain boost. You can use boost at any time in order to kick your car into high gear and go super fast. Learning how to maximize your boost and go full speed for an entire race is a thrill and a big part of why Burnout 3 is so successful.

The whole secret to Burnout 3’s success is that, unlike other games, crashes are embraced and even encouraged. Your key to victory is knowing how and when to give your opponent a little nudge that will send them into a crash so you can cruise by on the way to victory. Of course, your opponents will be trying to cause you to crash as well. When you do crash, you can press the A button to send the game into slow motion. You can then use the control stick to slightly move your car around in order to hopefully cause your opponents to crash as well. All of this is super easy to do and the crashes look absolutely gorgeous. Parts fly off in every direction, sparks light up the screen, and your car crumples like a piece of foil.

There is one other race type I forgot to mention above. In a game where the main draw is to crash, it seems fitting that there would be a mode that allowed you to do nothing but. Crash events point you at a busy roadway full of traffic and it is up to you to cause the most spectacular wreck possible. On the track there are powerups that give you infinite boost (vital to causing big damage), give you additional money, double or quadruple your score, and another powerup that cuts your total in half while another sets off a huge explosion that helps you send cars flying. You have to approach the traffic at the right speed and hit it at the right spot in order to do the maximum amount of damage. When a certain number of cars become involved in the wreck, you can blow up your car to cause even more chaos or use the momentum to try and grab powerups that you missed. The crash events are put together sort of like a puzzle and you have to think a bit in order to get the high score. Crashing is so satisfying and fun, though, that it is worth it to replay each crash junction repeatedly so getting a high score is just a bonus to all of the chaos you’re causing.

The main single player mode is the Burnout World Tour. You compete in the different race types and crash events in order to unlock new tracks and cars. There are over 150 events and getting a gold medal in all of them is a difficult but rewarding task. You’ll likely have played the game for 20+ hours just to open everything up and getting gold medals on everything will add quite a bit of extra time to that. The game is so fun, though, that you’ll likely run events multiple times because the game is so enjoyable, so Burnout 3 will last you a very long time before you get tired of it.

There are also multiplayer and online modes to keep you busy. You can compete in several variations of the crash mode and, as you would expect, the fun definitely increases when you add more people into the mix. There are also standard races available as well. Online games run fairly smoothly, but you connect to EA’s servers rather than the normal Xbox Live servers and the first couple of weeks online have seen quite a bit of turbulence. This will all get cleared up soon, but even with the lag the online modes are a blast.