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Speed.
Adrenaline-inducing, nerve-wrecking speed.
A glace at an indicator makes me wince as it displays the current miles per hour: a whopping 140.
I focus back on the traffic, twisting my car through the small streets of some unknown American city. I nervously glance at the tall buildings which rush by in a blur, at the same time avoiding the oncoming traffic. Maybe I should have stayed on the right side of the road. So far, so good; I haven’t crashed yet.
In front of me, one of my rivals is having his own problems as his car begins to drift the wrong way. I decide to alleviate his predicament and ignite the booster, increasing my speed to 200 miles per hour in 1 second. I give his rear a slight nudge, and while I speed past, his car careens over the railing and crashes into one of the buildings, showering glass and metal fragments everywhere. One down, two more to go.
Slowing down a bit, I quickly survey the situation: an intersection is looming at the horizon. With my current speed, I should reach it in two seconds. The cars I am pursuing deftly circumvent the traffic coming from the sides. My turn now. Spotting a small gap between a compact car and the concrete divider, I head towards it, pushing my car to its limits and probably beyond. My last thought is that I might just make it, before I get violently hit by a schoolbus coming from my right, smashing my vehicle into another car. The smoldering wreck of metal is the last testament of my latest attempt to pursue my rivals.
Welcome to the world of Burnout 3: Takedown.
My aptitude for racing games is far below that of other gameplaying individuals. The reason I decided to pick this game up were in large part inspired by R., who proclaimed his enthusiasm of this piece of software to the heavens and, getting no immediate response, to me. After some initial reluctance (why spend 60 Euro on a game I probably was not going to play much), I decided to eventually buy the Xbox version. After playing for a couple of minutes, my skepticism took a turn, and has not come back since.
Burnout 3 is about getting your car over the finish line first, no matter the cost. To accomplish this goal, rival cars can be smashed from behind, slightly nudged into oncoming traffic, or even forcibly encouraged to take a dive from a large cliff. The resulting crash and subsequent wreckage are so amazingly crafted, that you sometimes wince in shock and projected pain when it occurs. When you crash, it hurts. The downside is that this can also happen your own car, as the rivals try the same tricks on you. Where other racing games only concentrate on having the AI move faster and smarter than you, these automated entities actually display an aggressiveness that would not shame a human player.
This fact that you are able to (temporarily) take out your opponents means that even players who not know how to drive the perfect line can also enjoy this game. Also gone is the ridiculous paradigm where a car is not damaged when it smashes into a building. As stated before, when you crash, it hurts, adding to the excitement.
The visuals are incredible. Cars look detailed, and have a nice polished paintjob which reflects their surroundings. During races, the sense of speed is astounding, with the environment stretched out before the racer. Whether the track is through a city or a natural landscape, the detail is amazing, with no pop-up or dips in framerate. These same environments also tend to blur with every increase of speed.
In closing, all I can say that this game is an amazing piece of work. A plethora of different game modes, on and offline capabilities, and unlockables await the player. Avid fans of customization, brand cars and tune-ups should look elsewhere, although they will be left out of an amazing experience. This game addresses the most important element of games, which is pure fun.
