With this year's crop of realistic sim racing finalists, any arcade racing game would have had trouble standing out. Luckily, Burnout 3 is not just any arcade racer. In fact, it's a title that perfectly hones the thrills innate to great driving games, while adding exhilarating new twists to a genre not necessarily known for consistent innovation. From the moment we popped it in and hit the asphalt, we knew we had something special on our hands.

As a game, Burnout 3 is all about rewards, both literally and figuratively. From practically your first race, you find yourself racking up trophies, collectible photographs of your stylish opponent takedowns, and, of course, new cars for your burgeoning garage. Underneath these more tangible rewards lies a control mechanic that is both approachable for beginners and flexible for experts. The moment you first hit the turbo button and give your sled a nitro-fueled boost, you feel perfectly capable of controlling your car through the game's clever urban tracks and dense crosstown traffic, narrowly avoiding collisions at every turn.

Still, accidents happen. This being a Burnout game, however, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Burnout 3's approach to steel-mashing pileups is just as rewarding an experience as deftly threading through traffic to edge out a rival. During a wreck, the remains of your ride careen through the air in a slow-motion effect called "impact time." While this is impressive enough visually, the real kicker comes in the game's "aftertouch" system, which allows you to control the trajectory of your destroyed vehicle, most likely directly into the path of your trailing foes, thus causing more mayhem. With a bit of practice, these aftertouch takedowns (as they're known in the game) become one of the most effective and satisfying weapons in your road-rage arsenal. It's precisely these kinds of game-design choices--rewarding the player even during moments of "failure"--that make the game such a compelling and addictive experience.

Nailing the rocketing sense of speed, hair-trigger controls, solid online play, and deep challenge required of any successful racing game merits recognition for developer Criterion Games. That Burnout 3 does all these things and also just happens to raise the bar for arcade racing games unquestionably merits our award for Best Driving Game of 2004.