![]() Here, hitting anything at speed would have been a risk, and as such the subsequent reward for daring racing was higher.Īll of these elements, and the way they feed into each other, make Takedown the pinnacle of both the series and genre. Revenge and Paradise went too far the other way and introduced ‘traffic checking’, which enabled players to shunt cars going in the same direction and not wreck themselves. The original game had felt unfair in moments such as the aforementioned junctions, wrecking you at the slightest touch. There are moments where you’ll fly around a corner, missing a bus by inches before gunning the engine and launching across two lanes of traffic, with just enough left to chance for you to feel like you’re in control of the best car chase of all time. The handling model, similar to Ridge Racer in that throwing the back end of the car out at every turn was key, was pure action movie driving. It all came together to make Takedown one of the best ‘flow’ state games ever made: it requires total concentration, and in doing so becomes almost hypnotic in its play, the various visual tools (motion blur, etc) only heightening the experience. With fixed courses, Criterion could introduce chokepoints for all the racers: junctions, high-density traffic environs (looking back on it now, Paradise seems curiously empty) while also tailoring the stage to enable all those sweeping drifts and mad wrong side driving. Crazier driving equaled more boost equaled more speed, but it also (obviously) increased your chances of getting smashed to bits, something that the player could ill-afford, especially in multiplayer. Takedown’s stages were near-perfectly conceived to take advantage of the game’s punishing, exhilarating risk/reward mechanics. Flashing representations of street signs at the top of the screen when you approached junctions? Indicators? A big arrow? A compass? There was a whole load of back and forth between departments as to the correct solution: a solution to a problem that didn’t need to exist.īurnout had, literally, lost its way, and in doing so had jettisoned a lot of what made the game great. One thing that only got decided towards the very end of the project – when various release dates had sailed by, modes dropped or altered, and thousands of arguments had been had – was just how you would explain to players how to navigate the vast open world. They were actually getting further away from the ideal with every milestone. The senior management thought they were making the greatest Burnout game ever, following the bigger=better maxim. Working on the project (as a senior tester in the QA department) was a strange mixture of excitement, trepidation, and hubris. Open world driving games were just coming into vogue at the time – Test Drive Unlimited, spurred by an excellent demo and timely release, was leading the way on the new machines – and so it seemed a good idea at the time. Replaying the courses, it becomes obvious what a fatal mistake it was to abandon fixed tracks in favour of a sandbox in Paradise. ![]() The sense of speed the game generates is unmatched anywhere else, and is just one part of an interlocking series of features that work together to give the game its tremendous appeal. It is the absolute antithesis of The Real Tedium Simulator, Gran Turismo: whereas that game may accurately simulate driving a small family car to the shops to pick up some biscuits for your nan, Burnout feels like you’re piloting a craft that happens to look like a car yet goes about 700 miles an hour. Revenge and Paradise followed, but it’s Takedown that still reigns supreme. The preceding games were excellent in their own ways – Burnout 2 in particular – but it was with Burnout 3 where Criterion perfected the arcade racer with a game so expertly crafted, that even its own creator couldn’t top it with subsequent efforts. Burnout 3 was released in europe on 10th September 2004, and instantly asserted itself as the best racing game of all time and the game that finally broke my ailing PS2.
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