The chokehold this would have had me in if I had a PS2 as a kid.
It's rare to see a game so dead-set adamant on what it is right from the first "Press Start," but Burnout 3 dares not mince a single word: "You're not gonna get by just driving good. You HAVE to be aggressive or you WILL lose."
And I wholly appreciate how hard it goes in enforcing that rule. Your rivals will ALWAYS be on your tail, arguably in a rubber band-ish fashion, but your top speed alone is never going to grant you levity. You need to boost, be constantly boosting, and boost at the right time to slip through at critical split-second situations. You don't get that boost for free, either. Granting boost upon successful risky maneuvers is an absolute genius pull. You HAVE to stay in the oncoming lane. You HAVE to battle, trade paint with, nudge into oncoming traffic, and wall slam your rivals. You gotta drift between civilian cars with just inches of space. Doing everything you can to be drip fed that juuuust enough amount of boost to be able to take the win with. Burnout 3 creates such a moment-to-moment gameplay consistency with such unprecedented frequency it practically struggles to be even remotely boring or tiring to play, and its swelling mass of content ensures you won't be running out of things to do for a long, long time. It strikes an incredibly delicate balance of pure, obscene fun, so delicate that the slightest flaw or nitpick would threaten an immeasurable blow to its enjoyment. Unfortunately I have more than a few nitpicks, and they all seem to play off each other in such a way that it’s hard for me to find a starting point.
The first thing that struck my mind during my playthrough was the game’s visibility being notably low all due to the camera’s ridiculously low placement. Your car is not only practically centered, but the amount of real estate it takes up on-screen is nothing but a detriment to your visibility. It is genuinely hard to see upcoming turns, road islands, dividers, rails, rivals; practically everything oncoming, and that goes double when going uphill. Even after hours of playing and familiarizing myself to a self-satisfactory degree I still end up hitting something that I absolutely did not see, resulting in a crash that felt unfair. Another detracting factor in this game’s readability is its lack of any sort of map UI or camera controls. In addition to not being able to adjust the camera to any comfortable degree, there is no form of display where you can read the road map. No minimap on-screen and not even a map display on pause, just a rough overview of the road lines on the select screen. This makes not only reading the oncoming roads but the spatial awareness of your rivals at any given time much more unreadable and hard to follow, and the occasional “YOU ARE X SECONDS AHEAD/BEHIND” marquee doesn’t help.
I wholly understand the appeal of this franchise despite this being the only title I’ve played. It’s adamantly emphasized on vehicular combat and its impressive destruction physics, and they are indeed impressive. When the spectacle wears off is at the realization that they’re unskippable and sometimes overly long, usually not cutting off until the destroyed car stops moving, which could be at any time. The g-force of going 220 MPH to 0 at an instant feels as real to you as the driver in some cases. Pair this with the low visibility and the muting of the in-game music during crashes and it truly feels as though you are ripped from the game entirely, as technically impressive and sometimes absurdly humorous these trademark crashes are, they are nonetheless jarring and whiplash inducing at the worst times, and at their absolute worst during the Road Rage events. Every crash shortens my patience, and every single time I’ve turned the game off was during a crash I no longer had the patience to sit through.
My slightest nitpick overlays the entire web of issues I have; man, do I hate face button acceleration. I have weak, brittle baby gamer hands; I can’t hold Cross or A for any amount of time before my whole hand begins to cramp. Why are there no rebindable controls? Why should I have to rebind them to the triggers in PCSX2 and make a more awkward game experience for myself?
The strangest issue I have with Burnout 3 is that all my problems with it seem to be personal nitpicks. I’ve never seen anyone, anywhere, at any point in time, similarly bemoan these issues. People blast through it like they’ve lived on these roads with real-life familiarity. Everyone loves the car crashes and wacky physics and have no problem with their obtrusiveness. They can play this shit for hours without discomfort, and I can see why. Burnout 3 is an absolute blast and I ultimately love playing it, but with gameplay so touchy and moment-to-moment, I find that any personal nitpick in its range can be catastrophic and detrimental. Fortunately, as elaborate and specific my issues with it are, Burnout 3 is such a strong title on its own wheels that I can’t find anyone, including myself, taking it to be an actual car wreck of a game. This shit still rocks.
It's rare to see a game so dead-set adamant on what it is right from the first "Press Start," but Burnout 3 dares not mince a single word: "You're not gonna get by just driving good. You HAVE to be aggressive or you WILL lose."
And I wholly appreciate how hard it goes in enforcing that rule. Your rivals will ALWAYS be on your tail, arguably in a rubber band-ish fashion, but your top speed alone is never going to grant you levity. You need to boost, be constantly boosting, and boost at the right time to slip through at critical split-second situations. You don't get that boost for free, either. Granting boost upon successful risky maneuvers is an absolute genius pull. You HAVE to stay in the oncoming lane. You HAVE to battle, trade paint with, nudge into oncoming traffic, and wall slam your rivals. You gotta drift between civilian cars with just inches of space. Doing everything you can to be drip fed that juuuust enough amount of boost to be able to take the win with. Burnout 3 creates such a moment-to-moment gameplay consistency with such unprecedented frequency it practically struggles to be even remotely boring or tiring to play, and its swelling mass of content ensures you won't be running out of things to do for a long, long time. It strikes an incredibly delicate balance of pure, obscene fun, so delicate that the slightest flaw or nitpick would threaten an immeasurable blow to its enjoyment. Unfortunately I have more than a few nitpicks, and they all seem to play off each other in such a way that it’s hard for me to find a starting point.
The first thing that struck my mind during my playthrough was the game’s visibility being notably low all due to the camera’s ridiculously low placement. Your car is not only practically centered, but the amount of real estate it takes up on-screen is nothing but a detriment to your visibility. It is genuinely hard to see upcoming turns, road islands, dividers, rails, rivals; practically everything oncoming, and that goes double when going uphill. Even after hours of playing and familiarizing myself to a self-satisfactory degree I still end up hitting something that I absolutely did not see, resulting in a crash that felt unfair. Another detracting factor in this game’s readability is its lack of any sort of map UI or camera controls. In addition to not being able to adjust the camera to any comfortable degree, there is no form of display where you can read the road map. No minimap on-screen and not even a map display on pause, just a rough overview of the road lines on the select screen. This makes not only reading the oncoming roads but the spatial awareness of your rivals at any given time much more unreadable and hard to follow, and the occasional “YOU ARE X SECONDS AHEAD/BEHIND” marquee doesn’t help.
I wholly understand the appeal of this franchise despite this being the only title I’ve played. It’s adamantly emphasized on vehicular combat and its impressive destruction physics, and they are indeed impressive. When the spectacle wears off is at the realization that they’re unskippable and sometimes overly long, usually not cutting off until the destroyed car stops moving, which could be at any time. The g-force of going 220 MPH to 0 at an instant feels as real to you as the driver in some cases. Pair this with the low visibility and the muting of the in-game music during crashes and it truly feels as though you are ripped from the game entirely, as technically impressive and sometimes absurdly humorous these trademark crashes are, they are nonetheless jarring and whiplash inducing at the worst times, and at their absolute worst during the Road Rage events. Every crash shortens my patience, and every single time I’ve turned the game off was during a crash I no longer had the patience to sit through.
My slightest nitpick overlays the entire web of issues I have; man, do I hate face button acceleration. I have weak, brittle baby gamer hands; I can’t hold Cross or A for any amount of time before my whole hand begins to cramp. Why are there no rebindable controls? Why should I have to rebind them to the triggers in PCSX2 and make a more awkward game experience for myself?
The strangest issue I have with Burnout 3 is that all my problems with it seem to be personal nitpicks. I’ve never seen anyone, anywhere, at any point in time, similarly bemoan these issues. People blast through it like they’ve lived on these roads with real-life familiarity. Everyone loves the car crashes and wacky physics and have no problem with their obtrusiveness. They can play this shit for hours without discomfort, and I can see why. Burnout 3 is an absolute blast and I ultimately love playing it, but with gameplay so touchy and moment-to-moment, I find that any personal nitpick in its range can be catastrophic and detrimental. Fortunately, as elaborate and specific my issues with it are, Burnout 3 is such a strong title on its own wheels that I can’t find anyone, including myself, taking it to be an actual car wreck of a game. This shit still rocks.