Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

It took some amount of peer pressure to make me go out and buy this game. I hadn't played the previous installments, so my only preparation for this game were the reviews I had read. And as it turned out, this game is beyond words, it's just plain awesome.

At it's core, Burnout 3 is just a very simple arcade racer. You pick the race you want, you pick a car and you keep pulling the right trigger until you finish the race. However, they added some other features too. For instance, you can make your adversaries crash. It's actually quite instrumental that you do, because it'll earn you precious boosting energy. Whenever you crash into some traffic or into a wall, you can use the aftertouch function. Everything slows down and you can move your car around. Whenever you make an adversary crash into you, you keep your boost energy, otherwise you'll lose some.

It's vital that you master it, because there will be massive amounts of crashing. The game succeeds in delivering a sense of blistering speed. It also rewards you for driving recklessly (near misses, driving in the wrong lane, drifting, the works!). It earns you boost, which is essential in nabbing victories. But whenever you're driving in the wrong lane, it's not illogical to occasionally crash into an oncoming car. The game does a good job of rewarding the risks you take however, so it never really feels unfair.

The main gamemode is the Burnout World Tour, which consists of a couple of events. There are races (both normal and eliminator), road rage events (take down a fixed number of adversaries) and crash events. The latter are great, although they can be quite easy sometimes. You use your car to wreak havoc on a busy crossing, while you're trying to get the best score enhancing pick ups as possible. It's really fun to do, because every level is like a puzzle.

However, this game shines even harder in multiplayer. It's perfectly accessible for anyone, even though they've never used a controller before. In my experience, those are the game that you want to play at a small party, because everyone can participate and more importantly, everyone can win.

But I'm drifting off, Burnout 3 is one hell of an arcade racer!