12/16/2023 0 Comments Burnout 3 takedown level design"We wanted it to be like a fight." Forget the frustration of Moto GP, where cheats and spoilsports can ruin your lap time with one vicious nudge - this is all about aggression. "We didn't want the playing experience to change online," explains Alex - a none-too-subtle dig at the way games like Midnight Club ditch all the traffic as soon as you plug in a network adaptor. It'll also - tantalisingly - be playable with six human players online. The speed's been ramped up to insane degrees - the cars unlocked at the end of Burnout 2 come in as the default selection for this instalment - so best get the eye-drops and Red Bull in now.īut what about the surprise hit from Burnout 3 - the stress-relieving, metal-grinding delights of ruining an entire motorway's day in Crash For Cash mode? Criterion are keeping quiet, except to say that it'll return in even more spectacular form, partly thanks to the fact that it's now possible to 'steer' a destroyed car slightly. Burnout 3 might well be the best-looking game on PS2 - side by side with Gran Turismo 4 it's a close-run thing, but consider the sheer volume of traffic and it's a clear victory for the street-racing boys. Of course, this wouldn't be Burnout if it wasn't matched with more technical clout than a roomful of cyborg monkeys. Conversely, stay glued to their exhaust for long enough and they'll freak out, earning you a Psych bonus. The opposition almost always tries to take you out, and they'll even jostle you into oncoming traffic - perfectly emulating the feeling of two-player mode in Burnout 2. It won't last long, mind - vicious AI means they'll be back on your ass unless you're boosting constantly. By the way, if all this sounds a bit too violent, there are rewards for evasive driving skills - negotiate your way through a pile-up unscathed, and you'll get a special Crash Escape bonus, letting you leave the pack behind. Criterion haven't yet decided whether they'll be including explosions or burnt out shells, but they're considering it - especially for those moments when a car goes ricocheting down a cliff. In Bangkok it might be a rack of conveniently-parked tourist coaches - in Vienna it's one of the trams buzzing along the streets. Each track also comes with 'signature takedowns' - areas where extra bonus points are available for easing a rival into the scenery. Other enhancements to the fender-bending include 'payloads' - stack it into a truck and it'll shed its cargo all over the road, creating a hazard for other drivers. It's now possible to twist and crumple the car's actual shell - it makes Burnout 2's crashes look kitten-tame. Chats with the Industrial Light And Magic crew mean that every slam's accompanied by belching smoke, and every scrape produces a blizzard of sparks. If a shunt's too pedestrian, you'll see the explosion as a Hollywood device known as an air ram - a big log fired from the car's underside - detonates to flip your motor skywards. And these are Hollywood crashes, baby - if they're not spectacular enough, Criterion aren't above tweaking the physics to give gravity a hand. Wipe out yourself, and the intelligent Impact Time smash-cam pans around to give the best possible view of your concertinaed front end, the bus you've just taken out or the cars ploughing into each other behind you. Pull a Takedown, and the camera flicks back for a super-slow-mo look at the wreck you've caused, switching back seamlessly as the race continues. The pile-ups are breathtaking, like an aerial ballet of crunching metal and broken glass. Not that you'll need much incentive to cause some carnage, of course. It's virtually impossible to win the race with a standard-sized meter - careful drivers need not apply. Each Takedown expands the famous Burnout bar, letting you store more boost for a prolonged blast of speed. The real art, though, is the Takedown - that expert yank on the wheel that nudges another car into a wall or an 18-wheeler. With five opposition cars in every race (two more than the last game), you're awarded points and boost for Brawling, Raging and Grindin' - all different euphemisms for mixing it up with the pack. Caning it into oncoming traffic and actively trying to get that telltale 'Vwip!' from a Near Miss, you were never more than a millisecond from disaster, but experienced players could run an entire race without chassis-on-chassis contact. In the first two instalments, the odd bumper-crumpler was the price you paid for the insane speed and 'take risks to earn boost' game dynamic. "Crashes," explains Criterion's design director Alex Ward, "are not the worst thing in the world".
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