Gamer Memories: Burnout 3: Takedown

At IGN, we're a lot of things. Nerds, douches, Achievement whores, over-raters, under-raters, and so much more, but at our core, we are gamers. Each and every one of us has a brain filled with cherished memories that revolve around our hobby. Unwrapping a Nintendo Entertainment System on Christmas morning, beating Streets of Rage with a pal, desperately trying to get Lara Croft's nude code to work – you get the idea. Before all of us who lived the adventure drift into a senile state and forget, IGN thought it would assemble those stories in an ongoing feature called "Gamer Memories."

Here, an editor will walk you through one of his or her favorite memories involving a controller, some kind of dance pad, or (more generally) a memory that was a defining experience for the editor's time with games. On tap for this installment? Why, it's none other than Dana Jongewaard, IGN's expanded audience executive editor ... that means she's a big deal around here.

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I'm not a fan of racing games. Sure, they're pretty, but drooling over virtual versions of real-life vehicles has never revved my engine. So back in the summer of 2004 when I was working at the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, I didn't pay much attention when a demo disc of Burnout 3: Takedown showed up in our office.

In magazine-land -- at least in our version of magazine-land -- we worked like dogs during the final week of putting out an issue, staying past midnight every night in our frantic rush to get everything sent to the printer. (Of course, we would then turn around and do next to nothing the first week of the following issue, thereby endlessly perpetuating the cycle, but what can I say -- we were slow learners.) It was getting close to Week 4 on that issue, so it took a couple of days before my coworker Joe popped the Burnout 3 demo disc into one of the PlayStation 2 debugs sitting around the office. Within a couple of hours, however, we were looking over Joe's shoulder as he ran a car up a ramp and flew through the air, smashing into an intersection as cars from both directions plowed into him. And then he he did it again, and again, and again.

"What the hell is this?" someone asked.

"It's Crash mode!" Joe explained. "You want to cause as much damage as possible!"

Is there anything not fun about causing mass mayhem and destruction? Those little dinging sounds as the dollar amount steadily grew were like the ringing of a slot machine -- it made us want to play more and more. We quickly developed a set of rules: one turn per player, and one restart if you didn't like your launch angle off the ramp. We also started developing strategies, learning how to get the x4 multiplier and the crashbreaker, plus timing it just right to get that red semi at the tail end to tip over and spill its cargo on the road.

Everything was innocent enough at first, but it quickly led to bad places. I started calling my husband in the early evening to tell him I wouldn't be home till very, very late because of the loads of work left to do. There was a lot of work piled up on all of our desks, but none of us was doing it. Instead, we were all sitting on the floor in a cube, passing a controller around and trying to beat the current high score in Crash mode.

It wasn't until the third night of deadline that we discovered Road Rage. A mode where the whole goal is to run as many people as possible off the road?!? Yes, please. Our asses stayed glued to the carpet in that cube, passing the controller. My husband started getting suspicious about the late nights, especially when I had to go into the office both days that weekend to catch up on everything I'd been putting off. On Sunday night, he finally cornered me to find out what was going on, and I confessed.

"Well you see, there's this new racing game that came into the office..." I tried to explain.

He wasn't buying it, but I promised him that as soon as we wrapped things up, I'd bring it home so he could see for himself.

The next weekend was his birthday, and after we went out to dinner with friends, I hauled out the debug and Burnout 3 disc that I'd snuck out of the office. Our friends weren't gamers at all, but I had become a Burnout 3 zealot, burning to convert everyone over to my side. I knew they would LOVE this game, and if they didn't, well, then they were just stupid. But since I don't make friends with stupid people, it only took a couple of rounds before they too were believers, feverishly side-swiping the other cars on the road and using up every last millimeter of the boost bar.

"It's a hot streak!" we'd all scream in unison with the on-screen text that popped up whenever someone took out three cars in a row.

Not long after the full game came out, I had to be out of town, so my husband invited his friends over for beer and Burnout. When I got home the next morning he was sound asleep, and when he finally woke up that afternoon, he confessed they'd been up all night playing the game.

"How far did you get?" I asked.

"Well..." he hesitated. "Um, we played the same Road Rage course from before."

"You spent 10 hours playing the SAME RACE?" I exclaimed.

But then, who was I to judge? I'd done exactly the same thing -- except I'd easily logged twice those hours. And I'd done it instead of doing my job.

That wasn't the last time I used Burnout 3 to convert non-gamers -- later I hauled my PlayStation 2 on a family vacation and had the pleasure of watching my then-seven-months-pregnant sister screaming at the television as cars flew off the road in her wake. I have loved a lot of games over the years, but Burnout 3 holds a unique place in my heart. No other game has turned me into a missionary, on a quest to spread the wonder and joy.

And to this day, remnants of Burnout 3 still permeate my life. Just last week, my husband was tossing trash into a garbage can from across a room. When he nailed his third basket in a row, I threw up my hands in victory.

"It's a hot streak!"

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