I dunno what it is, but clearly something made me wanna do another Criterion/EA title on the PS2 - it being Burnout 3: Takedown.
Now, to clarify, I've never played a Burnout game prior to this one, but I did get to peek at the previous two installments, and that made me realise the evolution of this series was... pretty funny, to say the least. Burnout 1 almost felt like a Simple 2500 game (the controller menu ONLY having a "vibration on/off" option will never not be funny to me). Burnout 2 was basically "yeah, nah, let's make this less of a street racing game and more about reckless driving". Burnout 3 is probably the biggest improvement in the series just by how many things were added and polished up compared to 2, much like NFS going from Porsche Unleashed to Underground - and it still made me constantly annoyed about having to redo six-minute races over and over again just because of one little mistake. Or something minor I've had no control over.
I've never played Burnout 3, but I did play something close to Burnout... Revenge, as it turns out: Gameloft's Asphalt 3 for old-ass mobile phones. At least in the version I've played, all upgrades were unlocked with money you won from the races, - unlocked, not bought, mind you, - gameplay boils down to "just keep boosting lmao" and turning only exists so you don't crash into oncoming traffic or the few obstacles (like lamp posts) that actually pose danger. It is very much like NFS Underground aesthetically, - only instead of one densely populated American town, you raced all over the world, - to the point where I thought this is what the real NFS Underground was like; and having played that, I can say NSFU didn't have cars dying left and right, so...
...anyway, Burnout 3. Main features compared to its' prequels: total EAfication (complete with added voice acting and licensed soundtrack), very condensed and abstract representations of USA, Europe and Middle Asia with races and crash courses spanning either across one location or the whole continent, boost bar being IMMEDIATELY accessible, killing rival cars, killing rival cars causing the boost bar to become noticeably bigger, being able to "steer" your car even after it crashes, more elaborate unlock system for cars that matter, and twice/thrice as many unlocks for cars that mostly don't matter and look (and behave) very samey across the board. There's so few stats shown for each of them I was like "yeah guess I'm sticking to the Dominators whenever I can".
To clarify, I don't want Burnout's gameplay to be as dumb as Asphalt 3's, - though I wouldn't necessarily mind it, - but most of my annoyances with specifically Burnout 3 came with its' main selling feature: the crashes. They look cool. But boy howdy do they impede on gameplay even though there's now a thing that lets you take other people's vehicles with you.
To elaborate: while BO3 could do with a funny drifting mechanic for making that one turn in the French/Italian town, crashing into walls head-on is fine. Every civilian vehicle being thrice as tanky as the racecars involved isn't. This becomes a problem even on the same-direction lanes, where your car kissing the rear bumper on any NPC car means that it's the former that's gonna be the victim. Doing that same thing to your rivals, - at best, - dents your car a bit and mildly annoys the opponent. Don't get me started on how you can crash the whole thing because of some invisible bump on an otherwise completely smooth wall.
And because of how the AI catches up in this game, crashing yourself a couple times may very easily cost you the entire race. Did crash a couple times? "YOU ARE 30 SECONDS BEHIND". Have been maintaining pole position, doesn't matter if it's for ten seconds or three minutes? "YOU ARE 2 SECONDS AHEAD". Shit's veeeeery tense - unless it's one of those rare cases where the AI fumbles so hard they're the one lagging behind for a good... three states away. The fatalism was so deep-seated in me I've restarted far more times, mid-race, than I've actually won. Doubly so if it was a close finish and I didn't go through the finish line first.
Okay, but then Criterion have realised that maybe crashing would do with a proper comeback mechanic, and they came up with Aftertouch Takedowns. This is basically the only reason why you'd 1) intentionally wreck yourself or 2) not immediately restart the race unless you're doing a time trial: you crash, you hold the slo-mo button, you carefully steer your broken husk of a car into others and, if you're lucky, you can force it right into your competition. If you're VERY lucky, you can do that twice in a single crash. Or thrice. "Lucky" being the keyword here, because not only can the AI steer clear of your stuntman act - more often than not, you can't see shit anyway. The camera almost never faces the oncoming side, meaning you have to guess where, on this four- or six-lane road, your five rival cars are driving at.
So, you know, it's kinda weird to need to slow down in a game that encourages you to go fast all the time. Slow down WAY more than I did, anyway. Could very much be a skill issue, but still.
Crash Mode feels downright straightforward compared to normal races, even if it's not "evenly" balanced and has its' own screwball moments - hell, I'm pretty sure I've managed to unlock all Crash-exclusive vehicles way before I've even finished the three final tournaments. For some reason, there's three of those, practically in a row.
Oh, right, and the Signature Takedowns... pretty sure I've got most of them by accident. I've tried getting a few of those deliberately and... first of all, you need to somehow correlate the track map in the menus with the track itself in the game - the map is the only indicator of where you can do funny car murder, and the track I was too busy actually racing on. Second, wall takedowns are easy because there's walls everywhere anyway - vehicle takedowns, conversely, aren't, since you, your victim and your weapon have to somehow align like stars, all at 240 miles per hour. Explains why I still didn't get them all yet.
And that already adds up to the deep, deep timesink that is BO3. I mean, it's funny how, when video games became more accessible to, and purchasable by the public, they've also massively ballooned in playtime required to complete them, isn't it?
Now, some of my bitching and moaning WAS addressed in Revenge, which means they've added Traffic Check (thrashing civilian cars) and an actually controllable camera for the Aftertouch - but the two main reasons I haven't played that as frequently (not yet, anyway) is the dehydrated piss filter and... the fact it doesn't run quite as well on the Steam Deck. Welp.
