Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Addiction... Thy name is Burnout 3

I've never got around to getting a racing game for the latest generation of consoles. I was fairly addicted to Ridge Racer on Nintendo 64 but I've been fairly sceptical about many of the racing releases since.

When I went to trade some of my older titles in for a new set of Konga's and Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat I ended up with more trade than new game and under presure I reached for the cheapest game that I could remember wanting.

The result was Burnout 3: Takedown for X-box. It had review well in just about every review that I'd seen but had never got around to buying it. Mainly due to being wary of games that do well in every review (e.g. Halo 2 which I never really got into and was recently traded for Kongas)

However, with Burnout 3 it resulted in almost instant addiction. From the outset you start unlocking new elements and from then you're hooked, just one more track, just one more car, just one more award. The graphics are great, the soundtrack is pretty good (with some familiar artists such as Franz Ferdiniand and The Von Bondies) and the racing is frantic and engaging.

The most disappointing thing about it's addictive gameplay is that Vanessa is completely hooked. One of the challenges in the Burnout World Tour (see also Career mode) is Crash for Cash, where basically you drive your car into an intersection with the aim to smash as many vehicles as you can. Vanessa has barely been able to put the controller down since she started. So much so that she's now over twice as far through the game as I am and have to fight to get my X-box back!

Damn your addictive gameplay Burnout 3.... I'm off to by another X-box! :)

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