What do you get when you take one of the most eyeball-searingly-fast racing franchises going, and add in the ability to ram other opponents off the road? Absolute euphoric carnage that's what. The previous Burnout titles managed to build a reputation on throwing the game's circuits at you at a stupidly fast pace, the challenge being of course to race against a handful of opponents but also to dodge a myriad of pedestrian vehicles. Takedown changed all of that, giving you a sense of invulnerability that throughout the preview coverage fans thought would surely break the game; what was the incentive and where was the challenge in dodging traffic at lightspeed to steal victory at the last second, if you could barrel straight through a blockade and win anyway? Therein lay the rub though, as developers Criterion handled the distribution of this ability perfectly, meaning you could only enter such a state if your boost meter was suitably filled up. This lead to so many instances where - thanks to the many hidden shortcuts and multiple levels within a given track - if you timed it right you could barrel straight into the side of your opponent and use the resultant momentum to fly away ahead of the pack...only to be taken out by someone who had been targeting you all along too. Replay it specifically for: One of the most perfect racing game experiences - Amultiplayer or otherwise - put to consoles since Mario Kart.
