Because what I want in a car game is fast racing, drifting through turns, and all-around aggressive driving. For years, I found this only in games like Crash Team Racing and Mario Kart. Even Smuggler's Run and Grand Theft Auto. And that was pretty much where I expected the genre to peak for me. Then I started noticing the reviews for Burnout 3: Takedown. (Note: I have never played Burnout 1 or 2, so I can't say what features are a historical part of the series and what is new to 3.)

This is a game built for guys like me, who prefer an arcade experience filled with flashy wrecks and unbelievable speeds. I can recommend it without hesitation because it succeeds on nearly every level. Great tracks, great draw distance, great crashes. And it's the fastest thing I've ever played, even on the first level. Burnout 3 is shockingly fast. The speed is real. Then you hit the turbo button and it gets ever faster.

Burnout 3 is built around a supply of tracks so diverse I lost track of counting them. There are three major venues - USA, Europe and Far East - each with several gigantic courses. Each course has multiple paths for different events, but you never feel like you're driving the same areas over and over again, probably because it's so damn fast you don't see much of the beautiful scenary.

There are a bunch of race types. You can run solo for the fastest lap, a normal race of 6 cars, an elimination race where the final guy each lap gets erased, and a road rage race where you just have to score crash takedowns. There are also Grand Prix events, where you travel several courses with a recurring score tally. All of these take place on "real world" courses where you have to face commuter traffic and tight turns... no boring NASCAR loop tracks here.

What differentiates this game from other hardcore racers is the emphasis on crashing. When you smack an opponent off the track, you earn more energy for your boost meter, which is used to activate a searing turbo charge. Plus you earn points, which act as one way to unlock more cars. And the camera follows each enemy crash for a couple seconds so you can gleefully see the results of your Dale Earnhardt-esque abilities. Happily, these sudden camera switches do not affect your driving at all; the game takes care of your car for you during the split-seconds you're watching the crash cam... so you never zoom back to your car to find it upended into a Starbucks. It adds a sort of smacktalkable sports angle to it, since you get to actually see the big crash instead of just watching opponents disappear offscreen.

Now what happens when you crash? One of the most overused effects in contemporary video games: bullet time. But you have to love it because they do it with cars. You crash and the world goes slo-mo (if you hold R1). During this, you can kinda sorta continue to steer your smoking heap, or control its flying trajectory, so that it hits enemy cars. They call it "aftertouch," which smacks of rampart buzzwordism to me. If you can manage to whack another car during aftertouch, you score an immediate crash on him. All the while, parts sail off your car, sparks are everywhere, and the music dives into a slowed-down aural blur. It's good fun. You even get a couple points for your crash, tallied in a Tony Hawk style stunt display: Into Rival + Barrel Roll + 250ft Skid + 1.3s Air + Into Taxi.

Another feature of Burnout 3 is almost a minigame: crash junctions. These are 100 separate levels, culled from intersections and roads in all the main courses. The whole point of these is to cause the biggest car pileup you can, initiated by sending your car down into oncoming traffic like the amazing rocketship Phoenix. You can even trigger a gigantic explosion once you score enough incidental wrecks. Once the chain reaction ends, your total damage (in $) is added up during a hilarious flyover with overlaid graphics. Collecting crash $ is another way to unlock additional content.

The crash junction paths are littered with power ups, which is how you get the big money. The power-ups are all grabbable even after you personally wreck, so you can still snag the big $x4 multiplier by steering your exploding metal heap into it in mid-air, slo-mo style.

The music follows EA's usual jukebox of licensed tracks. They're all modern alternative songs, with one classic thrown in for no good reason: The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." The options are slim, especially when compared to playlist-centric titles like SSX3. You can select each song to play only during races, only during menus, or both. During a race, you can tap L2 to skip to the next track. Not much ado there. There's also a terrible in-game DJ who is intended to build the illusion that all of these races are part of some overarching world tour storyline. He can be easily switched off, in the greatest audio option since SOCOM's in-headset comm. He talks at stupid times (in the middle of songs?!?), and his dialogue repeats far too often to maintain any amount of genuine DJ plausibility.

Now about those unlockables. They're lame. This is one time where it ain't the landslide of locked content that's keeping you playing (OMG it's the gameplay!) I don't mean the locked courses and events, that's part of an expected progression and not really bonus material per se. What counts for unlockables in Burnout 3 is more identical cars and lots of stupid art files.

First of all, the cars are not actual cars. There are no licensed automobiles in Burnout 3, just a bunch of lookalikes. There's several different classes (compact, muscle, coupe, sports, etc) and many cars in each class... but - physical model aside - they're all the same. Cars are rated on speed and weight, but every car within a particular class has the same rating (plus or minus one measly point.) The only reason for choosing the Assassin Coupe over the Coupe Type 3 is the exterior. (Hit square to cycle through three exciting paint jobs! Three!) I just unlocked the Coupe DX! It's the same as everything else! Whoopee.

The other collectibles are signature takedowns and crash headlines. On each track, there are certain semi-secret spots where you can land a signature takedown if you crash a guy at just the right location. You get more points for a signature, and you get a pre-rendered Polaroid picture of the crash. Yes, pre-rendered... so it's not a picture of your takedown, it's the artist's conception of what a takedown in the area might look like. Uh.

The crash headlines are only marginally better. If you exceed a pre-determined amount of damage in a crash junction, you get a cute newspaper front page detailed your massive wreck. Again however, it's generic. Uh x2.

Splitscreen multiplayer offers the necessary racing and raging modes. The graphics take a hit here; they're just not a sharp as in fullscreen. You can do the crash junctions multiplayer as well, both splitscreen and taking turns. Taking turns is the more spectacular option, since you get the fullscreen effects plus the competition of besting each other's score. Burnout 3 also does online multiplayer, which naturally retains your fullscreeniness.