Slashdot Log In
Review: Burnout 3 - Takedown
from the things-that-go-fast-fly-far dept.
- 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.
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Great, simple controls... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great, simple controls... (Score:2)
For those who played the original Burnout and didn't like it: this one is a lot better. I bought the original, played it once, and haven't played it since. This one I've played a ton of.
And if you have a PS2 and Xbox, get the Xbox v
Re:Great, simple controls... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention the ability to have custom soundtracks. That alone, to me, makes the game worth it.
Re:Great, simple controls... (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't seen the xbox version, but the PS2 version in progressive scan mode is pretty damn nice, too...
I hear that the xbox live online experience is much better than the PS2 one. I can't imagine it's worse - random disconnects, timeouts, server-side connection problems, and listening to other players voices that sound like they are underwater... EA seems to have major problems running game servers. But when it works, man is it fun!
Here are some thoughts regarding Burnout 3 that I wrote a while ago, but aren't 100% finished. Sorry for the length:
===
Burnout 3 Beefs
===
by Mattcelt1 (currently ranked 98 out of 30,000 on PS2)
Here are the things I have found to be helps or hindrances when playing Burnout 3: Takedown. Before I begin, I should say that this game is incredible. It is a major enhancement over Burnout 2, but interestingly they've changed enough that BO2 is still fun to play for its own sake. In Burnout 3, the graphics are incredible, the playability is way up there, and the game is just difficult enough to make you nuts. For the first time ever, I actually hit my controller hard enough in frustration to break the vibrating unit inside. Not my finest hour. But I'll be the first to say that I should be frustrated by my own screw-ups, not because the game isn't working the way it should!
Keep in mind that despite my rants here, this is still one of the most fun games I have ever played, and that these problems I have do not keep me from racking up many, many hours of enjoyable play. What's more, the interesting thing is that in nearly all the instances, the things I recommend are interface changes, mostly cosmetic. That should speak volumes about the game itself - it's built on a solid core, and I have no complaints about the physics or the controls. Most of what I'm going to complain about is nitpicking; once these things are addressed, this game will be as close to perfect as possible. So now it's time to see what I'm on about.
The Camera:
By far the major offender in this game is the camerawork. I'm going to say this very loudly so that any passers-by from Criterion will hear it reverberating through the streets: HIRE A CINEMATOGRAPHER!!!! Seriously, put a cinematographer on your development staff and listen to what s/he has to say about the camera. The addition of 'aftertouch' in crash situations was a stroke of genius, and I love it. But a consequence of this great idea is that camera positioning, control, aiming, and zoom have suddenly become major factors in successful gameplay, where camera views were incidental at best in Burnout 2. Where they were once incidental windows into the action, the cameras are now integral to successful gameplay, and the lack of control makes them, frustratingly, a hindrance instead of a help.
There is something in film circles known as "crossing the line", the prohibition of which is the first rule taught to any cameraman. If there's a girl on the right and a boy on the left, you never, never, ever cut to another angle where their positions are switched (i.e., the girl is on the left and the boy on the right). It's the biggest sin you can commit in cinema. Yet Burnout 3 does it all the time. You're racing, you crash. You start to aftertouch, pressing left to try to take down the car you know is following you. Then all of a sudden, the camera swings wide in a 180-degree arc, and you find yourself moving away from the other guy, without ever lifting your finger off the stick! This is too frustrating for words.
The second time this rears its ugly head is during crash competitions. Most of the time I play single-player crash, I plan my crashes so that I get the 4x multiplier (or one of the other power-ups) during aftertouch. But with the camera jumping around from place to place, and even coming to rest on some far-off vehicle that's rocking back and forth on its
Parent
Also available on PS2 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Also available on PS2 (Score:3, Interesting)
That's weird... (Score:5, Funny)
Fun (Score:4, Interesting)
Admittedly, it gets a little hard at times, I wish there were ways I could just skip a certain point (or points) and progress and come back them later. It's all a checkpoint system, where if I beat certain maps then others are unlocked.
Especially cool is the way the graphics blur when you hit turbo. The soundtrack gets old, the announcer is boring and very irratating. I still haven't figured out how to get the custom soundtracks working...perhaps someone could enlighten me.
This game will almost certainly have you hooked for weeks or more.
Re:Fun (Score:2)
Re:Fun (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
This game is the sheeeyot (Score:2)
The best part is the party crash mode where up to 8 people can pass a controller around and try to create the biggest pileups possible.
Heh (Score:2)
Great Live Game (Score:2)
Too bad the masses of Live have probably moved on. You'll find with many of the online console games that when two or three newer Live games hit people move to them. So, if you get an older (6 months) Live game you may have trouble getting bigger games going.
Noises (Score:3, Funny)
I played with Hot Wheels when I was a kid, and made lots of noises, but "psshhhh-kapoooo!" was not one of them. What the hell is that supposed to represent, anyway?
Re:Noises (Score:2)
It's almost sad that I know this.
Re:Noises (Score:2)
Definitely (Score:2)
Also, what I enjoy about it is that it makes a good party game as well. Short moments of excitement, ability to take a break any time you want, and a good rhythm for handing off (after ever crash for example) make this a much needed addition to the PS2's party game lineup. Of course, its also fun to play by yourself, or w
EA-published title (Score:4, Insightful)
All those people who decry the inhuman working conditions at EA, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. Stop rewarding their deplorable labor practices with your dollars.
Re:EA-published title (Score:4, Insightful)
All those people who decry the inhuman working conditions at EA, it's time to put your money where your mouth is.
But EA didn't develop this game, Critereon did. EA just published it, which doesn't involve any inhuman working conditions.
Parent
Re:EA-published title (Score:2)
Criterion Games is a wholly owned subsidiary of EA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:EA-published title (Score:3, Insightful)
Having developed games, in what seems like a former life, for the Dreamcast I still haven't forgiven them for their boycot of the system, and their recent actions against Sega. Not that Sega is a holy company in their own right, but working closely with them for those years I felt they truely c
In Related News (Score:3, Funny)
-G
www.g.pix.com [g-pix.com]
Re:EA-published title (Score:3, Interesting)
All those people who decry the inhuman working conditions at EA, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. Stop rewarding their deplorable labor practices with your dollars.
It isn't as if EA employees have no other choice than work there. EA isn't anything like where the 8 year olds in South East Bumfuckistan that made the clothes you wear [aflcio.org]. If EA so bad of a place to work then the employees might want to think about working somewhere else. A boycott of some [com.com] won't quite cut it.
NFSU2 (Score:2)
..the fuck? (Score:2)
Also, it's published by EA.
Re:..the fuck? (Score:2)
And what makes KotoR so much more news worthy? I'm not saying it's bad, I haven't played it. I'm just wondering why you think it's worthy of a review but not Burnout or whatever other title.
Pure brainless fun (Score:2)
For PS2 also (Score:3, Informative)
It's a great game none the less.
Re:For PS2 also (Score:3, Informative)
Whats the difference between burnout 1,2,3? (Score:2)
I'll probably go out and pickup a copy of burnout 2 today. Thanks.
I think I played Burnout 1 (Score:2)
I remember one race in particular. A large part of the race was down a busy multilane freeway (aka turnpike). The only way you could complete each lap in the alloted time was to hold down the boost button on this freeway, and the only way to re
Re:Whats the difference between burnout 1,2,3? (Score:3, Informative)
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
It's fun... but... (Score:2)
It's definitely worth the money. However, the sound tracks get old after the first 10 hours of play or so... they need a lot more music. The music is good, don't get me wrong, but hearing only the first 1/3 of each song before it's changed to something else gets tiring, and also wears out the playlist that much fa
Not Even Close to Good (Score:2)
However, i see burnout 3 as a perfect exmaple of what happens when an awesome idea gets subverted by a marketing team gone wrong, and a loss of focus on actual GAME PLAY.
While the many new game modes are fun and worthwhile, this game makes four egregious errors that are so bad as to cause me not to play it as much as its prior two iterations.
1 load, load, load, load.
The single greatest fault of the game is the continual loading... unlike
Re:Not Even Close to Good (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Great fun (Score:2)
It's also fun because it's real easy, you don't have to be super-precise, and you don't end up getting killed constantly.
This version is a great improvement over #2, which was fun for the crashing part, but wasn't as interesting as #1 for the racing. #3 combines the best of both ealier versions, with much, much more racing venues and gameplay.
Defi
it gets even the non-gamers (Score:2, Insightful)
A warning to burnout 2 players... (Score:3, Interesting)
These 2 wheels allowed us to race against each other in Burnout 2, which is the ONLY thing we ever did.
In Burnout 3, these 2 wheels do NOT work. Only one works. I AM LIVID.
What the fuck is EA doing? Removing hardware support from previous versions? Trying to participate in a conspiracy to get us to spend another $150 on steering wheels?
If anyone has ANY information on how to get 2 wheels working, I'd love to hear it.
Re:Good God..... (Score:2)
Re:Burnout 3 ruined my sex life (Score:2)
Damn! 11AM? that would make it tough
Huh. (Score:2)
Re:Burnout 3 ruined my sex life (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, come on, this is
Re:Front Page News? (Score:2)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Re:sigh (Score:2)
If you stick to mainstream (ie console) gaming, yes.
Darn it - I want a new x-com or MOO or MOO2 (and not that abortion MOO3 either)
Seconded. (and MOO3 left me feeling like a good friend had stabbed me in the back)
Re:Gothan racing (Score:2)
Re:*yawn* (Score:2)
There's a 170 races. About 30 or so different courses.
Re:*yawn* (Score:3, Informative)
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. Ev