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Burnout 3

Just ask anybody; I’m a Burnout junkie. A couple of years ago I gave a rather glowing review to Burnout 2. Sure it had a few little issues, but I chalk that up to (the late) Acclaim’s habit of ignoring quality control. Of course, EA’s gotten their hands on the Burnout franchise now, and I’ll say right now – Burnout 3 is absolutely fantastic. There’s some ‘buts’ in there, though, which I’ll discuss later.

The main bulk of the game is tied into a championship mode now. Basically, you unlock new venues every time you win a race. But the fan favorite Crash mode has been tied into the main game this time as well. Don’t feel like racing? Fine, go do one of the 100(!) Crash courses. I’ll talk more about Crash in a minute, but first I wanna say jabber on about the actual racing.

Boy howdy, has racing in Burnout evolved. No longer do you just race to the finish line. Now there’s a bit of extra mayhem you can do on the course. An opponent coming up too fast for your liking? Rub that sucker into the wall. Fake him out. Push him into oncoming traffic. Be VICIOUS! Causing an opponent to wipeout instantly fills your Burnout meter AND extends it by a little. Rack up the kills and that meter can get huge. But don’t get cocky, because those bastards are also gunning for you too. Wipe out and you’ll lose that extension to your meter. Of course a wreck won’t automatically drain your meter like it did before, but every little bit counts. But just because you wreck doesn’t put you into last place. NO, Criterion added a rather nice new feature, called Aftertouch. Upon wrecking, just hold down “A” and you can steer your wreck into opponents cruising up behind you, causing THEM to wreck, and you won’t lose your meter extension.

There’s also awards you can get during races depending on certain actions. If you knock an opponent into the right obstacle, you’ll get a signature takedown award. Get all of them and voila, a new car. There’s also awards you get for doing certain maneuvers, for destroying a certain number of cars, etc. Once more, doing enough unlocks more cars.

Standard racing isn’t the only new goody either. They’ve added a new type of race, known as Road Rage. The only purpose here is to takedown as many opponents as possible before time runs out or before you wreck yourself into complete inoperability. Also on the plate are the one-on-one challenges, which have you competing for a new car. There’s also the fun Eliminator mode, which is basically a last man standing race. Come in last on any lap and POOF, you’re out.

I do have a major, MAJOR gripe about Burnout 3, though. And it’s a biggie. Why the hell did they decide that rubber band physics would be a good idea? This is also known as “Catch Up” mode to all of you familiar with the Need For Speed games. All I can assume is that EA must have demanded it, BECAUSE of Need For Speed. Unfortunately, though, unlike NFS, you can’t turn it off. I realize that devs think it adds a challenge to the game, but the thing is, it’s REALLY unfairly tilted towards CPU drivers in Burnout 3. You can make an ugly takedown on your opponent, and suddenly there he is, passing you a few seconds later. And god forbid you wipe out if he’s a few seconds ahead, because you’ll never catch up to him. You can be driving a car that’s a couple of bars faster than what your opponent is driving, but it matters not, because they all have magic turbochargers under the hood. This is really obvious in the challenge races, because you will get a good ways ahead and sure enough, a few seconds later, he’ll be right up your butt, looking for a way around. Please, PLEASE, take this out for Burnout 4. If you can’t take it out, at least balance the damn thing better.

Whew.

Anyway, to me, the biggest draw of Burnout has been the Crash mode. I was so disappointed when I ran out of Crash courses in Burnout 2. I was getting really frenzied into it, and bammo, I was done with it. Burnout 3 remedies this by giving you 100 Crash courses to cause motor mayhem on. Man oh man, that’s a lot of crashy goodness. And it’s not the same as before, either. Now they throw in all sorts of lovely surprises into the mix. There are now all sorts of bonuses to grab floating around the stages, including multipliers that’ll ram your score up a full 4X. This is needed to get the gold on a few of the sicker levels, but sometimes it’s just there to give you a disgustingly high score and cause you to giggle like a mentally unstable 8 year old with ADD setting fire to an anthill. But don’t think that’s all. There’s also the Crashbreaker, which is triggered when enough cars wreck during your run. When the Crashbreaker becomes active, a simple tap of the button makes your car go kaboom, sending it sky high, and scattering anything surrounding you. There’s also Crashbreaker icons in some levels that instantly blow you up and cause more destruction than the 9 o’clock news can legally show. They kept the Aftertouch active in Crash mode as well, which comes in handy when trying to get to some of the bonuses. Don’t forget (like I did) that the Aftertouch becomes active after going over a ramp as well. Seriously. Remember that.

Burnout 3 is a stunningly beautiful game too. The cars are well detailed, much moreso than in Burnout 2, and crashes are much more satisfying now because of it. Tankers explode, log trucks lose their cargo, etc. And you get all of this at the silkiest frame rate imaginable. It’s truly a work of firey art. I will complain, however, that most of the 70+ vehicles you can get are just the same car with a different paint job. Well, in each class anyway. There’s a few exceptions, like the fire truck or the city bus. But for the most part, every compact looks the same and drives the same, ditto for the muscle and sport class.

Burnout 3 is also one of those games that makes me thankful for the custom soundtrack feature available to Xbox owners. I dunno WHAT they were thinking when the soundtrack was chosen, but it’s horrible. It’s a bunch of “hip” tunes by bands who grind on my nerves something fierce. It sounds like glo-stick time at the rave moreso than “let’s cause some major hospital bills” music. I suggest loads of Ramones songs for Burnout 3. Oh, and the announcer is annoying. Fire him.

Every single mode in the game is also available as a multiplayer game, and is also on Xbox Live! The interface for getting TO Live is kind of a buttsore, but once you get going, you begin to wonder why every game on Live isn’t this fun. Road Rage, CRASH(!!), EVERYTHING! Yes, folks, multiplayer Crash. And two different flavors at that. You can either Crash cooperatively or Crash head-to-head, trying to cause as much havok as possible. I love this game even more!

So yes, this is the best arcade racing game I’ve ever played. Even with its glaring faults, the sheer amount of fun more than makes up for it. There’s a few things I’d recommend for the future, though. Most notably is the rubber band physics, but another would have to be… LET US SKIP THE DAMN TUTORIAL VIDEOS! SHEESH!! Oh, and while I would definitely love to see Burnout 4 go the same route as this game, can we PLEASE get a sort of “side story” version? I’m thinking… oh… Burnout: Crash! Yeah, I can dream.

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Tags: Burnout 3

Posted by Jeff Shedden on Oct 11th, 2004 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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