Gotta belt this one out. I cannot stumble so close to the finish line.
-Day 16: Super Mario Bros. 3
-Day 17: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
-Day 18: Super Metroid
-Day 19: Chrono Trigger
-Day 20: StarFox 64
-Day 21: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
-Day 22: Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga
Day 23:
Burnout 3: Takedown
Playstation 2 (also on Xbox) September 7, 2004
A racing game in my Top Ten?
Yes, A resounding YES!
I suck at racing games. I. Am. Terrible. I even sucked at Mario Kart. The only time I ever played a racing game "well" was the original Ridge Racer on PS1 and at that point my best was pretty mediocre. Any racing simulation game like Gran Turismo? Sucked. Any tuner/street game like Need for Speed. Horrible. Lucky for me there was a game created that took advantage of my unique video game driving skill set and created a sublime experience in my opinion.
Criterion games had made a couple of Burnout games before I had even heard of the series, but I was at E3 2004 at the EA Games booth and saw an amazing trailer for Burnout 3: Takedown. It looked freaking great. Yes, it is sad that it took the evil marketing power of EA for me to notice this series (the games had been published by Acclaim prior to part 3), but getting people like me to notice a great game is a good thing.
A cool trailer is one thing, but not enough for me to go out and buy the game on day one. I had finally gotten a PS2 of my own, but I was still relatively frugal with my gaming spending at this point in my life, so instead of buying it outright i skipped it. Later on I finally tried the game out on a demo disc and was blown away.
Getting back to my "skills" in a driving game. I am pretty damn good at crashing into other cars. It is just a natural thing for me in a driving game. This game in particular REWARDED aggressive driving. It is encouraged to hit other drivers, take out non racing cars, drive in opposing traffic, just outright do everything wrong possible. This was exactly my type of game.
The other more famous mode in this game was the puzzle like "Crash Mode" where a situation is set up where the right type of collision could cause an epic amount of mayhem. Figuring out the correct racing line, which car or obstacle to take out, the right jump point to get the sweet spot in the set up traffic. I would spend HOURS just toying with each puzzle to maximize the damage. The fact that this mode has not survived into the future versions of Burnout still makes me sad.
This was that game where I decided that as long as the developer stayed on, I would buy every version that comes out, every time.
Tomorrow we move to 2005 to hit one of THE best games I have ever played in my life.
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