Drive fast, crash faster...
Road rage, dangerous in real life, awesome in video games. Criterion Games have captured the feel of speed in this awesome arcade-type racer. With stunning graphics, great multiplayer, online, and lisenced music this game is an arcade gamers dream come true.
GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay is pretty basic, you accelerate, you decelerate, you make turns... with only a tiny difference... and that is crash and your car is totaled. This game really captures the feel of speed better then 90% of the racers out there, with stunning motion blur adding to the feel. In this game crashing can be deadly yet fun, when you crash you see a spectacular real-time animation of your car getting ****ed up, while this is happening you have the opportunity to slow down time and control your cars movement to a certain degree, if your good you might crash into an opponent and mess him up, if not you'll just crash and your car will be instanlty fixed and you'll be able to start driving again. Most of the games races are put you up against 5 other computers, making a total of 6 racers, and lots of oncoming traffic just waiting for you to destroy them. This game features a nice tour mode (career type mode) which last about 15-20 hours. The core gameplay of this game is fun, and sometimes you just want to crash to see what happens. Crashing dosen't neccessarly mean you lose though (this is the thing that makes Burnout 3 great), if you crash you lose about 3-4 seconds, but your opponents will crash too, lots of times, meaning you can be first for the entire game and mess up at the end and still lose, and vice versa. This game is FUN.
GRAPHICS:
This game has great graphics. The cars are nicley detailed, nothing too fancy, but not bad either, the motion blur while driving adds to the realism of the game. The games tracks are nicley detailed and the random traffic is detailed nicley. Overall the graphics of the game are pretty good, won't take your breath away, but they are pretty. When you crash the car damage is realistic, although it only shows on a few parts of the car. The graphics are great in this game.
SOUND:
The sounds of the game are ok at best. The game has some licensed music (like most other EA Published games), but its nothing spectacular. The car engine and crash noises are pretty good although many sound the same, or very close to each other. So yeah, the sounds of the game are ok, not too good, but not bad either.
VALUE:
This game is worth a purchase. It has a pretty long single player mode (about 15-20 hours, depends on your skill), then you can do challanges to unlock other cars, the multiplayer and online mode are both superb. This game will last you a long time to complete, but you will enjoy every minute of it.
In closing, this game is definatley one of the better games out. It has great graphics, awesome gameplay, and will last you a long time. This is a great game.