I rented Burnout 3 for the Xbox yesterday. Although, yes, I don't have my Xbox yet, I invited a friend over to play games on his Xbox. After missing two buses to where I need to go to rent the game, we finally caught a third bus up. We got it, and went home--simple as that. I had briefly played Burnout 3 for the Playstation 2 at my friend's birthday party the previous weekend, and let me tell you: the game just doesn't seem to suit the PS2. The controls are screwy on the PS2 controller, the game doesn't look that great, and I didn't really enjoy it. In fact, I felt that the style of Burnout 3 was a lot different than Burnout 2's: drift, if I recall correctly, works different in each game (In Burnout 2, you simply ease on the gas while turning and then press back on the gas to drift). Now that I rented the Xbox version, it just feels like a perfect fit for the Xbox: the triggers do a great job for accelerating, braking, and reversing, and the game simply looks awesome on the damn 'Box. Jeff Gerstmann is absolutely right about the Xbox version being a lot better. I dunno. Maybe there were two aspects that led to me enjoying the Xbox version so much more than I did while playing the PS2 version:

Xbox version: I'm playing it close to a 32ish" TV; PS2 version: I played it a good distance from a 19ish" TV

Xbox version: I played the game with one friend; PS2 version: I played it with eight friends Oh, well. The fact is that this game, so far, is awesome. I love all the bonuses, I love all the ways you can earn cars, and I love the gameplay. In fact, when I'm done writing this entry, I'm gonna go pick up the controller, and play it some more. Races are pretty challenging unless I don't screw up. They are pretty fun, but they aren't that fun when you're running away from second place by "20 seconds." I love how Criterion focuses mainly on takedowns: I feel great when I ram my opponent into a wall, sending them into flight. I feel great when I crash, and I take an adversary with me. I feel even greater when I'm behind in a race, and I take down my opponents, one by one, to eventually take the lead. I can't wait to play this online (split-screen is slowly becoming obsolete, but that's a story for another time). Road Rage, which is where you pull off as many Takedowns as you can within a certain period of time, is a bigger bundle of fun! And what makes it even better is that the pressure of winning a race while doing it isn't there: I can just take down my opponents until I either wreck my ride to the point where it dies on me or when the time runs out. Again, takedowns make me feel good. Crash has never made me think as hard as I am when playing it in Burnout 3. In Burnout 2, there never seemed to be a really advanced tactic that you had to pull off just right to get the best score. Well, Burnout 3 does just that, and I'm having fun while doing it. It's fun to figure out how to get the bonuses and the multipliers, all while triggering explosions, and making the most mayhem you can. Fun, fun, fun. Man...all this talk about Burnout 3 is making me hungry...for Burnout 3!