Burnout 3: Terrifying in how much fun it is

One of my and my girlfriend’s favourite games to play together on our PS2 is Burnout 3: Takedown.  It’s fun, it’s addictive, and it’s challenging, which is always a good mix.  It is a rare game in that it is still fun to play if you don’t win or don’t play properly.  Its entertainment value, however, is perhaps one of the most sinister parts of the game.

 Burnout 3 is a racing game with a twist.  It’s all about danger.  You get more boosts in the race for driving dangerously and for pushing other cars to their doom.  They have an entire game mechanic in place, including slow-mo cameras, for the act of crashing.  Our favourite part of the game (because we’re both pretty rubbish at actually racing) is Crash Mode.  In it, there’s no concern about road safety.  Your goal is to crash your car into traffic to cause as much mayhem and damage as possible.  There’s a commentator which seems to suggest that this is a full-on sport, which is confusing as it’s doubtful that anyone could survive actually participating in it.

As the title states, one of the most terrifying things about this game is how much I enjoy it.  Driving as fast as I can, hitting a ramp, smashing into an oil tanker, and then using the slow-mo explosion mechanics to bounce around an exponentially increasing circle of carnage.  What’s not to love?  Your points are based on the dollars worth of damage that you do, and seeing that number top $1,000,000 for a single crash is very satisfying.  And of course, you can select your car, so things like the Fire Engine suddenly become very enticing indeed.

It’s an excellent game for what it is: hilarious destruction.  If you’re looking for anything serious, look elsewhere, but then again, who’s looking for that?  I’ll take my cars extra crispy!

Random Game of the Century: Koudelka

 In my 2^nd year of university, my housemate came across an obscure game that made us very happy.  I never played it, I must admit, but I saw all that I needed to.  Koudelka is a gothic horror-esque adventure using turn-based combat for the Playstation 1.  This isn’t overly my cup of tea, although I really want to play Left 4 Dead at the moment, but this game had one thing which made it a must-play.  It’s set in Aberystwyth.  For those who don’t know, that’s the small Welsh university-town I live in.  This makes it awesome, and so I must mention this game, even if only briefly.

Koudelka is set in something like 1892 in Aberystwyth, and begins with the protagonist (a woman, which was relatively unusual in the PS1 days if I recall, apart from Lara Croft) riding into Aberystwyth on a dark night.  She passes a wall and enters a gate, heading up a street to a cathedral.  Given the rough geography of Aberystwyth today, we were fairly convinced she was riding up Eastgate Street, and therefore the game took place within 100 meters of our house.  It was really cool.

The game itself is fairly mediocre.  The graphics are atrocious, the battles are middling at best, and the story is quite slow.  The design of the game, the atmosphere, and the feel of the game, those are its selling points.  Koudelka is fairly creepy, and very Victorian.  Everything other than the atmosphere, however, is thoroughly average, even for its time.  Koudelka is only really excellent because of where it’s set.  I don’t know what designer in Japan decided that Aberystwyth was a good place to set a game, but I’m very glad they did.  Especially a zombie game.  The student population have long been prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse, and I’m fairly convinced that if anywhere on Earth will survive, it will be Aberystwyth.  Remember this.  It could save your life.