In November of 2001, a racing series called: Burnout was born. What looked to be another third party blunder actually raised a few eyebrows and drew impressive word of mouth/press thanks to its arcade-fresh driving physics and jaw-dropping crash effects. The sequel found equally good reception, and we now come to 2004: the marriage of EA Games and Criterion Games has produced Burnout 3, the most high-profile title of the series. With so many gamers and critics waiting to see what this third installment had to offer, it’s time to kick the tires and take this baby for a spin.
Though it’s possible that some racing game fans who mainly enjoy “simulation” style racers like Gran Turismo may immediately be turned off at an arcade-style racer such as this, those that have enjoyed games like San Francisco Rush or Carmageddon in the past will jump right into the action and enjoy the skillfully crafted yet insane racing physics.
Drivers are rewarded with a point system once again for pulling off daring tricks that consist of driving on the wrong side of the road, narrowly escaping a crash, heck, you even get points for pulling off a “takedown.” All of these maneuvers will contribute to your “boost” meter located at the bottom of your screen. It allows your car to have a “burnout” effect that helps you plow through traffic at lightning speeds. Though navigating through traffic becomes increasingly difficult at these kinds of speeds, it makes for a lot of fun and can really make the difference in a race. Of course, committing a “Takedown” will help as well.
A “takedown” is when you make another opponent wreck their car whether it is by plowing them into a pillar, side of a wall, or simply into another car. It’s probably one of the things that I noticed right away about this game; this title gains credibility by not being a shameless “car-knocking” game that revolves around crashing. Sure, the crashing of cars helps the game along, but what impresses me is its seamless addition of racing play. In order to win, you need to play dirty. Don’t look like you’re so innocent, how many times have you played your friend in Gran Turismo and felt bad for hitting him into something? Now here’s your chance to get away with it!
It’s undeniably the game’s crashes that set it apart from all the other arcade style racers on shelves today. Sure, the racing mode is enjoyable with its gorgeous looks and tight turning, but hurtling at full speed into busy intersection is one of the most invigorating feelings you can get from a game. I still remember playing the sequel, when the crash mode was first introduced. Many sleepless nights were spent trying to break my brothers’ high scores for a few of the crash junctions.
When the series started, Criterion Games focused on making a racing game that had beautiful-looking crashes. Having realized that gamers loved the crash aspects of the game, they added a mode dedicated to wrecking in the sequel. When it came time to announce a third installment to the series, I was ready for some more action.
The crashes seem as real as ever, with an upgraded particle/damage system in place along with new power-ups that you can obtain by actually having a measure of control over your vehicle after you crash! These power-ups include score multipliers, score reducers, and hey, there’s even another power-up that will detonate your car to cause maximum damage! For all junctions, there is a “Crash Breaker” requirement you can meet. If the requirement is met, you can detonate your car to increase points, or to give you that last bit of airtime you need to grab that score multiplier you need to take gold. In a given junction, the “Crash Breaker” might be 10 cars. This means that in order to detonate your car, you need to have at least 10 cars be affected by your crash. Once they are, you can have your car explode. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see in any game.
The extensive offline game was impressive to say the least. Burnout 3 World Tour mode is where the offline fun is to be had. In this mode you will be able to unlock countless races and 100 crash junctions, all of which will reward you with new cars upon completion. More and more events will unlock themselves in the three map areas; USA, East Asia and Europe. As far as map design goes, each area has its own look and feel to explore. It certainly makes things interesting when switching up tracks.
But that’s not all: in addition to having the choice of either a crash or race event, there are seven different racing modes that you will play through in your travels of career mode. I will say that “Road Rage” has to be my favorite mode of race play. Your goal is to takedown a given amount of cars during the time limit in order to unlock a medal. It’s a smart mixture of racing skills and death defying stunts. The responsive control only makes things easier on you to maneuver through high-traffic areas in order to get to your destination, and meet your quota.
After crashing into my own stuff for long enough, it was time to destroy the world. Online road trip! A few months ago, details started emerging on how Burnout 3 would feature online play for the Xbox and I could not help but think of how EA would handle Xbox Live support; after all, the relationship between EA and Microsoft in regards to online play has been a turbulent one to say the least.
Corporate grudges are nothing new in this or any industry, but unfortunately, the consumer suffers. Seeing such franchises as Madden, Fight Night and James Bond all get online treatment on the Playstation 2, those on Microsoft’s 8-pound champ felt left out of the loop. This year saw the first wave of EA games with Live support and has been met with both rejoice and malice from gamers. One of the conditions EA reportedly brought to the table was to run all of their games through EA servers rather than through Microsoft (as all Xbox Live enabled games do). Although you still use your Xbox Live Gamertag to connect, there are server conflicts, software incompatibilities and online instability that haunt this game.
I’ve tried playing this game online from launch day for now about a week and have experienced game drops, login-failures and “friend list” malfunctions, and all I can say after giving them some time to work out the kinks is that it is inexcusable. There have still been no changes or improvements to this server or any other EA games with similar issues with Live Support for that matter (It’s been complained about with Madden and NCAA Football as well). This is not the smooth online experience that Xbox Live users are used to, and all it took was for EA to take their own games into their own hands and things got ugly.
I have tried to decide how much online playability actually matters when deciding what score to give this game. I have heard from some of my friends on Live that there are a few of them who will be trading it in soon simply because of the shameful online component. This is where I can see a game’s overall rating take a dive. I will honestly say that it has one of the most extensive, entertaining and captivating offline modes as far as racing games go. Personally, I will keep it around just for offline play simply and I can still blow the tires off my friends when they come over. Online play, however, is another story, and a much darker tale: disconnections happen too frequently, I cannot connect to certain friends and worst of all, I never know when I will be lucky enough to actually stay in a game after a race is completed. It’s at the point where I’ve become bitter and angry about the entire experience and I might just keep shop offline unless they fix the problems listed above.
This is not to say that there is no hope in sight. Most technical email responses from the company have come back with: “we’re looking into it,” a classic reply, but it makes me wonder if it will ever get dealt with. After all, game patches only come around about half the time problems like this arise. And with titles like Madden glitching out online over a month after launch, it becomes extremely discouraging to the Xbox Live gamer. I will note that if the problem is fixed, I will revise my score, but until then, many gamers may trade in their copies for this very reason.
Aside from the actual gameplay, this game is presented like a true champion. The one thing EA does put a lot of emphasis and value into is its presentation. The menus are a breeze to navigate and we are accompanied by radio DJ “Stryker” from the world famous KROQ FM in California. He adds personality to the game until you hear all of his remarks more than once.
Once you boot the game up you will notice EA’s soundtrack that is basically comprised of so-called: “upcoming and fresh music.” Well, if you’re into MTV pop/punk like “Yellowcard”, “New Found Glory”, and “Midtown” than be my guest and keep it on your soundtrack. There are some “Throwback Trax”, but I have opted to play some of my ripped albums I have that consist of music by 311, Incubus and Foo Fighters. In your face, EA!
Overall, Burnout 3 provides exhilarating gameplay, a stylistic presentation and an online mode with potential (that has yet to deliver). Old fans of the series will find themselves satisfied with their purchase, and newcomers to the series may want to buy this simply for the offline crash-mode. All in all this is a solidly built offline title that stalls and dies once you try and take it online. The online gameplay is what really digs into that rating above. If you are not heading online to play it, consider this game near perfect. If things get fixed, I’ll be revving my engines for years to come, otherwise, I may be taking it back to the shop for a trade-in.
