The Cynic Says……

Since my friend left his PS2 over at our house to have fun with, I took it upon myself to go out and buy a game worth playing. I found Burnout 3 on gamespot.com and saw that it had a 9.6 rating and an editor’s choice award. I figure being rated that highly, it might be a decent game. Gamespot absolutely went apeshit over the game (as evidenced by the rating) and stated that even if racing games are not your thing, the game is worth owning. Well, so I take my chances and buy the game from Wal-Mart hoping that it’s going to be good. I get the game home, take it out of the packaging, put it in, fire it up, and promptly shit my pants at the graphics. I haven’t seen more than 1 or two other games for the PS2 that take advantage of its capabilities quite like this game does. Motion blur, lights, sparks, damage, the sense of speed it provides. Just plain WOW. Obviously there’s still the inherent fuzziness of the textures that all PS2 games seem to have. I do believe that a better TV and perhaps an S-video cable would help that out a little bit. Our TV is a Philips/Magnavox 27″ from Wal-Mart or somewhere similar. Needless to say, even on a shit TV, the game is gorgeous. However, great graphics don’t necessarily mean a great game. The gameplay is actually really good, but has some major flaws which I’ll get to later.
There are quite a few gameplay modes, both single player and multiplayer.. multiplayer can either be played locally or over a broadband connection online. As of yet, I’ve not played any of the multiplayer modes. I’m still playing through the single player mode as of right now and enjoying it quite a bit. The most simple mode is just “race” mode, where you race against 5 opponents and try to win by any means necessary. The fact that you can ram them and plow them off the road and gain bonus points makes it even more fun. By ramming opponents in various ways you gain “boost” and when you score a “takedown” meaning you make them wreck into various objects (cars, trucks, buses, walls, bridge stanchions, concrete barriers, guard rails, etc) , your boost meter fills completely. When you score multiple takedowns, your boost meter grows in size such that it can hold more boost (up to a maximum of 4x original size). Finishing in to top 3 nets you a gold, silver or bronze medal to add to your collection and in many cases unlocks further races.
The next mode is road rage mode, which is probably one of the most fun on the game. It’s laid out like a race, but instead of laps you’re given a time limit. During this time limit, you’re given a goal of how many “takedowns” you need to score to get a given medal. Basically, it’s a no-holds-barred demolition derby where your entire purpose is to run as many cars off the road during the time limit as possible. There is one catch, however, and that is that your car suffers damage from crashing as well and at some point will explode, ending the round even if time has not expired. The fun part is that you can get what are called “signature takedowns” that give you bonus points. Basically they’re extra-special takedowns that go beyond the normal smash them into a wall variant of takedown. As of now, I’ve only scored two of them; gone fishin, where you ram them OVER the guard rail, down the hill and into the lake… and Pillar driller where you smash them into a concrete pillar holding up a bridge. Lots of fun. These aren’t just limited to road rage mode and you can score them in any mode that includes opponents. Fun shit for sure!
Then we have my person favorite stress-reliever mode called “crash”, which is quite simple. Take your car and plow it into cross traffic or oncoming traffic (depending on the level) and try to do as much damage as possible. Damage is tallied up at the end of your “run” in dollars along with any bonuses or multipliers you catch along the way. Each level has a “goal” dollar amount to reach either gold, silver, or bronze. Generally speaking, in order to get a gold medal, you have to take out quite a few cars along with hitting any bonuses along the way. I’ve come across a couple levels that have a 2x multiplier that you absolutely MUST hit to get a gold medal. Needless to say, crash mode is a short, sweet and simple way to blow off some stress by blowing shit up. The crashes are nothing less than spetacular… and with the new “crashbreaker” feature, it makes things even more interesting. Basically after a certain number of vehicles are taken out, it lets you blow up your own car to cause even more damage (by pressing R2 when crashbreaker displays on the screen). Burnout has also added the ability to go into slow-mo and control your car during a crash by holding the R1 button and using the left analog joystick to “steer” your car while you’re crashing. This basically allows you to direct the carnage where you wish. It can make for some incredibly spectacular crashes, that’s for sure. Barrelling a car @ 100mph into cross traffic, plowing into a tanker truck, exploding, flipping through the air and landing amongst about 10 buses parked in an alcove, then exploding your car amongst the buses makes for some insane carnage. Talk about fun!
Other random stuff from the game…. You unlock cars not only by winning races, but also by tallying a certain number of gold medals, by winning races 1-on-1 against your rivals, scoring certain numbers of overall takedowns, scoring a certain amount of points/dollars in crash mode overall, and scoring a certain number of “burnout points” (equivalent to style points in other racing games). There are an absolute ton of cars in the game, but none of them have real names. The “face off” races are ridiculously hard… basically they’re you vs a rival 1-on-1 in a point to point race and if you beat him, you get his car. The problem is that you can knock him off the road like 97 times throughout the course of a race and he’ll always manage to be right on your ass the whole time. There’s also a time attack, but only in single event mode. All others are available in world tour mode, which spans 3 areas: USA, Europe, Far East. I’m about 75% complete with USA as we speak.. I’ll report more back as I get farther along in the game. Overall I give it a 9 out of 10.