The Burnout series, which I was introduced to by Revenge, was one of the only game franchises I religiously played growing up. Each game has its own charm to it, its own unique spin on what makes this Burnout game a little different than the rest. Ultimately, I was best at Burnout Dominator, but my all-time favourite game was Takedown.
The Burnout series has long been known for two facets: Imaginary car makes and models, and ridiculous crashes. While even modern car games continually disappoint with weak damage models, Burnout 1 was delivering heart-stopping collisions at the very dawn of the PS2/Xbox era. Burnout 2, released a year later, gave us the addictive Crash Mode, where enormous pileups and maximum carnage were the name of the game. But Burnout 3 was where the series really nailed its stride.
Behold, the introduction of the Takedown. No longer were you an inactive participant in the fates of your competitors; you could directly murder them yourself, simply by using your supercar of choice as a giant sledgehammer. Smashing opponents was directly rewarded with more Boost, which was the Burnout equivalent to infinite nitrous oxide that replenished by driving dangerously. With a split-screen mode included with the game, I would wager this game has a friendship death toll rivaling Mario Kart. If that’s not enough evidence to convince you to dust off the disc and start slamming into traffic with reckless abandon, it was the highest-rated Burnout game ever released, with Metacritic bestowing it the title of “Universal Acclaim”.
So dust off the PS2 (again – you can probably see what my childhood was centered around), and get to some Road Rage.
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