Burnout 3: Takedown is the game that changed the Burnout series forever. A must have for any PS2 owner.
A big part of the Burnout franchise has always been the amazing crashes. Simply put: they look phenomenal. Everytime you scrape up against a guard rail, traffic, or opposing cars, sparks fly off in a flurry of light. When you crash, your car decomposes beautifully. As you get hit more and more, your windows crack, your bumpers fall off, your hood peels off, and many other things begin to happen to show the damage to your car.
The game also packs an unmatched sense of speed that most other games can't seem to do just right. As you gain speed, the motion blur kicks in and really ties the graphical package alltogether.
The game manages to keep a steady 60 frames-per-second throughout the entire game. I have played it alot and haven't encountered any slowdown whatsoever.
The sound is pretty good, but it could be better. The sound effects are great. Whether it be the loud shriek of metal scraping the concrete, the thunderous explosions, or the loud roar of the engines, it all sounds awesome.
The main downside to the games sound is its licensed soundtrack. Some of the songs are cool and seem to fit pretty well. The problem with the soundtrack isn't the fact that it's licensed, but the fact that most of the songs sound like EA raided a rebelious teen's CD collection. Aside from this issue, the sound is pretty nice.
The gamplay is also really solid. The controls are simple, but they work. The X button is used to accelerate, the square button for the brake/reverse, and the R1 button for boosting. You can also puss the right analog stick forward to accelerate, and backward to brake. This is useful for greater speed control.
There are a few different modes to play: Burnour World Tour, multiplayer, and online multiplayer. Burnout World Tour is the equivelant of a campaign. You pick which event you want to play, and, if you do well, you can unlock new events, cars, and tracks. This is alot of fun and will keep you busy for hours and hours on end. There is also split screen multiplayer and online multiplayer. The split screen is fun if your into that sort of thing. I have not played the online multiplayer because I don't have online, so I can't say anything about that.
In Burnout World Tour there are several different events: races, time trials, burning lap, road rage, and crash mode. Races are just that: a race. Nothing special. If you win a time trial, then you qualify for that specific section of races and other events. You don't always have to do this though. Burnong laps are simple. Every lap, the person in last place gets knocked out of the race this continues until the last person is removed from the race. Road rage is alot of fun. A group of three cars start "attacking" you. Once you take all of them out another group will be waiting up ahead. This ends when the time runs out (in World Tour), or you total. And laslty, there's crash mode. This was added in Burnout 2: Point of Impact. It was really easy to do: simply wreck your car in the right spot and cause the biggest wreck possible. This has been redesigned in Burnout 3 to take advantage of the game's new feature: aftertouch, which drops the game into slo-mo and lets you control your wreck. This is also avaliable in races and road rage events.
The biggest new feature added in Burnout 3 is the ability to takedown your oponents. This simply means that you destroy their car. This is crucial to the affore-mentioned road rage events.
The boost meter has also been changed. Instead of having to use it all in one shot, you can spread it out and use it as much or as little as you want. If you takedown an opposing car, a chunk gets added to your boost meter. If you get taken out, you lose some boost and one boost meter section if you have one. You can get a total of three extra meter sections added to your original meter. From there on, instead of getting any more meter sections, your boost meter gets filled up.
However, the game isn't perfect. The biggest issue I encounterd was, if make an amazing crash, you can't save the replay to show your friends. That's disappointing, but not insurnoutable.
Overall, this is a great game that provides an unmatched sense of speed, great graphics and sound effects, and an amazing experience that you won't soon forget. Burnout 3: Takedown is the game that changed the Burnout series forever.