#BURNOUT 3 TAKEDOWN BLACK BOX GAMES TV#

Much like in military shooting games, you’re essentially playing tag. Video games are an abstract medium, with abstract layers. Unique diorama levels where you launch yourself at a junction, grabbing multiplier tokens and speed boosts on your way to destroying as many vehicles you can come into direct contact with, or by proxy, smash other cars into each other in a horrific pile-up. To contrast the meandering curves and looping sprawls of speed, there are static, terminating crash events too. The entirety of the driving experience is perfectly encapsulated into these lovely bite-sized levels, each with a clear objective and bronze-silver-gold ranking, whether it be plain racing, head-to-head, time-trials, or my favourite: road rage (destroy a horde of enemy cars in a time-limit). Even split-screen at 30 frames per second feels robustly fantastic (and caused frantic hilarity in good company). All at an effortlessly creamy 60 frames per second. Weaving between oncoming cars, planning a route a split-second ahead in early detection of the pin-prick of car-bound headlights. Nitro-boosting to what still feels like 400mph in little pocket rocket cars. There is a real sense of inertia, mass, and gravity to the cars. (Well, until you re-spawn a millisecond later with a depleted or refreshed nitro boost bar.) A feature called impact time or crash after-touch allows you the god-hand of gently forcing your smouldering wreck in any direction, in slow-motion, as a disturbing and ethereal chorus of smashing glass, metal friction, and a choir of paranormal voices spookily nudges your car into another racer’s, causing them to be “taken out” by you posthumously. Or gunning it through straight tunnelled sections, the THX quality sound-effects whooshing over you.Įven in death, you can cause more damage. This racing game-a genre I normally hold little interest in-looked and felt better than real-life.ĭrifting around giant swathes of American alpine and urban multi-lane highways (other worldly locales unlocked later) boosting into the side and rear-end of enemy cars shunting rivals into cars, pillars, trucks, barriers, buses, and blunt concrete faces.

#BURNOUT 3 TAKEDOWN BLACK BOX GAMES TV#

And I’m sure you can see where this is going: Barely post-pubescent bawling of “Wonderwall” whilst blistering car paint-jobs against blurring in-game walls.įiretrap, grunge, and other post-cool baggy clothed early Aughties aesthetic styling aside, my eyes melted into the deep tube TV in awe at the sheer feeling of speed, the intensity of colours, the sharp focus and soft edges. You see, 2004’s Burnout 3: Takedown, with it’s play-list of edgy alt indie rock tunes had this special feature whereby you could import your own mp3 songs. Teenage kicks, right through the night, indeed. The reason I beg two degrees of separation is this particular troupe were big into drinking lukewarm super stubbies, mugging their arms around each other’s shoulders, and chanting Oasis lyrics into the salted fish air of my coastal hometown. I lost my Burnout virginity at a friend of a friend of a friend’s house. Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion/EA, PlayStation 2, 2004)

Burnout 3 takedown black box games