The Evil That Men Do: Burnout 3 and Sudoku
While my Mother was visiting this weekend, we spent some time in a bookstore contemplating the upcoming holiday season. We found a display of Sudoku books. I've been doing these since they appeared on the Wikipedia main page in June. I hooked ddmerillat shortly after by bringing a printed sample from WebSudoku.com home with me. When my Mother remarked that her math acumen was probably less than what Sudoku demanded, I explained that it only looked like a math puzzle. The next morning, I walked her through some Dell Number Place puzzles while lunch was baking. The choice of Number Place as an introduction was somewhat appropriate, as Dell started the whole thing almost thirty years ago with Number Place . . . the name Sudoku was attached when Japanese newspapers started carrying them. By the time lunch was over, she was hooked. I sent her home with one of my Number Place books, and they've become the same kind of time sink for her as they've been for me.
You may recall that co-worker Jay was the one who lent the Grand Theft Auto series to Dave and I. More recently, he dropped off Burnout 3: Takedown. Burnout has quickly become my favorite console racing game. For one thing, the maps aren't all tight corners in dreary cities. NFS: Underground was all done at night, which was annoying. Project Gotham Racing tended to use very short tracks in downtown areas, with very little opportunity to see what was coming up. Burnout has city tracks, but they're mixed with highway and countryside. What really gets the blood pumping, though, is the antisocial element. There are special rewards for forcing other racers into walls and into other traffic. When you make them crash, it's a takedown. There are even "signature takedowns" . . . things like knocking someone over a guardrail and into the water, which is called "Gone Fishin'".
Only half the challenges are races, though. The other half are crashes . . . cause as much damage as possible to as many vehicles as possible. After the crash is over, a camera flies by and tallies up the damage. This is where the game's bizarre mid-crash steering controls come into play. Even though you should already have lost control by any reasonable standard, you can still direct the car to try to hit even more. Take out the requisite number of innocent vehicles before time runs out, and you get to explode your car to cause even more damage. Even better, that explosion tends to launch you, and you get to steer in flight, too! That's often the best way to pick up power-ups like score multipliers. Too much fun.
You may recall that co-worker Jay was the one who lent the Grand Theft Auto series to Dave and I. More recently, he dropped off Burnout 3: Takedown. Burnout has quickly become my favorite console racing game. For one thing, the maps aren't all tight corners in dreary cities. NFS: Underground was all done at night, which was annoying. Project Gotham Racing tended to use very short tracks in downtown areas, with very little opportunity to see what was coming up. Burnout has city tracks, but they're mixed with highway and countryside. What really gets the blood pumping, though, is the antisocial element. There are special rewards for forcing other racers into walls and into other traffic. When you make them crash, it's a takedown. There are even "signature takedowns" . . . things like knocking someone over a guardrail and into the water, which is called "Gone Fishin'".
Only half the challenges are races, though. The other half are crashes . . . cause as much damage as possible to as many vehicles as possible. After the crash is over, a camera flies by and tallies up the damage. This is where the game's bizarre mid-crash steering controls come into play. Even though you should already have lost control by any reasonable standard, you can still direct the car to try to hit even more. Take out the requisite number of innocent vehicles before time runs out, and you get to explode your car to cause even more damage. Even better, that explosion tends to launch you, and you get to steer in flight, too! That's often the best way to pick up power-ups like score multipliers. Too much fun.