Burned out

Whilst I finally have a 360, I'm not in any rush to play any of the new games. Strangely I'm sticking to the original Xbox games. Seeing as the gaming industry is built on a constant demand for new things, I however am taking things at my own pace, leaning on the notion that games cost a lot of money, such investment should be made to last, and there's no rush. After all, if one game is completed at least there is another ready and waiting in the wings (ie my Hall of Shame).

Anyway, I dusted off the old chestnut Burnout 3. I have always had a soft spot for this game, with it's gorgeous presentation and a prospect of a racing game that's charged with adrenalin and the satisfaction of slamming the opposition of the road. It's great fun and certainly entertaining to watch. I can't recall how much time I have invested in this game - which is a surprise seeing as I normally don't enjoy racing games. But if one works then it must be doing something right.
However, now the flaws of the game have become obvious: The soundtrack is woeful having an uneven ratio of good songs to crap songs. The DJ Striker as annoying but he can be turned off thankfully. However, special ire is reserved for the AI of the computer: It is nasty indeed. Whilst the game relies on crashes, it seems to have no idea what it wants to do with them: You get points for doing some decent driving yet, at the same time, you also get points of crashing. Likewise, crashing seems almost inevitable: Some of them come out of nowhere, the player crashes seem to last a whole lot longer than the computer crashes in an almost taunting fashion (my partner will verify just how much swearing has come out of my mouth whilst playing Burnout 3). And speaking of the opposing cars, they seem the recover pretty quickly from crashes and they seem to speed away an impossible rate when you crash. I know games should be challenging but they shouldn't be unfair.

Still, Burnout 3 still has a charm to it that keeps calling me back - not bad a feat seeing as the racing genre has never really endeared itself to me.