You may have clocked the score I've given this game already, so I should state now and for the record - I don't like driving games. They generally bore me and the constant round of well-known make and model cars being dangled in front of us to encourage us to buy more games leaves me cold. I have rarely, if ever, found a driving game that made my adrenaline pump, caused me to break out in a cold sweat and had me swearing violently at the screen while still gagging for more of the same - until now.

Having half an hour to spare on my lunch break I wandered into my local GAME score to see if any releases had slipped under my radar. Burnout 3: Takedown was being tested on a plastic bubbled console and to kill a few minutes I picked up the controller and took the car for a spin. Twenty minutes later I left the store trembling and bathed in cold sweat, willing my shift to pass quickly so I could get home and play my newly purchased game until the wee hours of the morning.

Yes, this latest incarnation of the Burnout franchise really is that good. For those who have played Burnout and Burnout 2, you may be familiar with the style of mayhem these titles had previously unleashed on the unsuspecting public. For those who have not heard of Burnout before, it basically introduced this generation of gamers to incredibly aggressive driving tactics within a racing format akin to the Ridge Racers of old. However, the third in this franchise takes this a whole step further.

On entering the single player mode you're introduced to a spinning globe, with three major continents available to drive upon. Starting off in the US, you open up Asia and Europe as you complete the races, challenges and survive the devastation in each. To start with you have your basic racing game but with an incredibly immoral twist - not only must you come first but you must also build up your points and speed by ramming, scraping, tailgating, psyching out and knocking people off the road. There are variations within this theme, which include ramming a set number of cars off the road in various styles to win a race, being gradually eliminated based on your position in a race and battling head to head with one other super contender.

The cars themselves are none you will recognise, although they have obviously been based on existing models on the road. There are no trademark names, styles or models however, which may reduce the value of the game in the eyes of the Porsche, Mitsubishi or Toyota enthusiast. However, to be put off by that is to completely miss the point of the game; it is unfettered by trying to realise the powers and limitations of existing vehicles on the road and is not bound by the conventions of the road or the expectations of the manufacturers whose products are represented in the title. This has allowed immense creative freedom within the development team and has resulted in a tour de force of speed, adrenaline and crash-driven mayhem. The car types are generic, being compacts, coupes, muscle cars and racing cars, new versions of which you open up as your progress.

Even with the compacts this game is so FAST! It gets so fast that you exist on raw nerves to avoid oncoming cars, curves or scenery. However, getting to these incredible speeds is all down to how many risks you're prepared to take. How close dare you get to an oncoming car? How long are you prepared to drive on the wrong side of the road and how aggressively do you want to attack your competitors? The tracks are sumptuous and vast, with plenty of opportunity to do all of the above, either against regular traffic or your adversaries. In doing so, a boost meter gradually multiplies in the bottom of the screen. Activate this and you can almost feel the acceleration push you back into your comfy chair.

In the early stages of Burnout 3, once you've run a rival off the road you can pretty much keep your finger on the boost bar and get gold, but later on this must be used judiciously. You don't always get the chance to indulge in any on-road naughtiness, so you have to save what you've earned and mark the spot to put it in force. Some of the few straight-ish sections you come across are great examples of where to use it. Also, hit another car and you'll be respawned quickly and in top gear but having lost not just your hard earned boost but also the precious seconds against your competitor. More tracks, events, sections of map and cars become available as you engage in races, Grand Prix events, one-on- ones and so on.

As you work your way around the map you get plenty of opportunities to open up extras through the crash tests. These were introduced in Burnout 2 and have been tweaked and improved to near perfection. It basically involves you gunning your car up to top speed as quickly as possible and driving into a busy junction, road or hairpin bend and trying to wreak as much havoc as possible. The more of a pile-up you create, the greater the chance you can unleash a bomb under your bonnet, which causes more chaos, spinning debris, burnt out vehicles and pile-ups spanning both sides of the road. It is such incredible fun to see even more cars sliding into the already massive pile of twisted burning metal.

Once the carnage comes to an end a camera pans from one end to another, totting up the value of each wrecked vehicle and if your total reaches set targets you achieve a bronze, silver or gold medal. During these crashes you can touch tokens on the road that give you value multipliers, cause explosions or even launch your car into the air. Getting to these whilst not crashing and still causing as much mayhem as possible is the real trick to it, as without the multipliers you're often not likely to get gold, or in later stages anything at all. It's a combination of incredible feats of driving and intense puzzle solving, which adds yet more depth and fun to an already landmark driving game.

This bedlam of crushed and battered chrome and paintwork is reflected to a tee in the graphical presentation of this title. However, even before you get involved in the on-road nastiness, the introduction screens and training modes just ooze quality. The menus are classy and easy to navigate, represented in a bold funky blue and gold motif, with lots of flashy thingumajigs and whatsits to ease you through the game selection process. Of course, it's only when you get out on the road that the sheer impact of the graphics hits you.

First of all is the amazing draw distance - you can see for miles! There is no fogging even if you're at the far end of a mile-long boulevard. Everything has been represented in great detail, even from far away, which makes certain landmarks and points in the course easy to spot, reminding you what's coming up. The fact that all this is done at such incredible speed with no slowdown at all is just jaw dropping.

Next up are the landscapes themselves, the settings within which you race. These are many and varied, reflecting the continent within which you are driving. Competitions and races in Europe see you driving through sun-speckled mountain passes and cobbled streets of rural villages, such as you might find in Turkey. The events in Asia carry a different kind of light, the style of buildings you drive through are what you might expect from Asian countries and the destruction in the US is carried out in surroundings reminiscent of California. The tracks in each of these areas wind through them in a different manner dependent upon the nature of the competition, so you're going to be treated to something new and visually interesting every time.

Finally there are the cars themselves and the mayhem they cause. Besides the beautifully rendered cars of you and your opposition, the variety of vehicles on the road are equally impressive. They range from small Fiat look-alikes to Gran Cherokee wannabes, loads of flatbed trucks carrying a wide variety of different cargoes, plus plenty of buses and lorries. When the competitors and the ordinary traffic meet, you are treated to such an incredible spectacle of devastation and you get the option to watch it all in slow motion. You can practically feel the crunching of glass, the crushing of metal and the screams of shiny chrome ruined by the impacts. Pieces of debris fly everywhere, as your car or a competitor's is flung into the air in a spinning frenzy of mutilated metal. Forget Grand Theft Auto, forget Driv3r, forget any other racing game - you're not going to see anything as well presented and stylish as in Burnout 3.

This quality of presentation is carried over into a well considered barrage of sounds. The screams of rending pieces of car add extra flavour to this already sumptuous gaming feast, as does the whoosh of the speed boost, the growl of the engines and the booming explosions of your onboard bomb. Added to this is an excellent soundtrack of forty cracking tunes, including hits from the likes of The Ramones and Franz Ferdinand. While we don't get to hear the tracks in their entirety, being as if come across when spinning through a radio dial, what we do hear injects a further sense of urgency and drama to what's happening on the other side of the windshield. The only niggle I had with the sound is a slightly irritating and intrusive DJ but he can be switched off anyway.

What with all these treats you're going to be playing the single player version for quite some time. You do start off working your way through the races and events, earning gold medals with relative ease, but after a day's worth of play you get a feel for the size and scope of the game when you realise you've hardly scratched the surface and things are already getting pretty tricky. However, sometimes it's good to leave a frustrating single-player race behind and consider the multiplayer options of the game. These are many and varied, including some excellent online opportunities to strut your chrome-clad stuff. Online games include straight races, knockout events, wins by the best number of takedowns, multiplayer crash courses and duels. There are many lobbies set up around the world, so you can choose to play someone 3,000 miles away, or just a few hundred yards down the road - it's up to you. This is also an ideal game to invite your mates over to play; although it's only a two-player split screen set up for home use, the games are of such a type that it is easy to control their length and you may find your controllers being passed frenetically around your chums.

The perfect balance between our ability to concentrate for certain periods of time and the length of each race really adds to an incredibly polished title. What with the totally aggressive but fun gameplay, the sheer madness of the speed at which you drive, the incredible quality of the foreground, background and moving visuals and the pumping soundtrack to run alongside it, you'd be a fool not to have Burnout 3: Takedown in your collection. Even if the only games you usually play are RPGs or first person shooters, I can guarantee you will have fun with this game and come back to it again and again while other old favourites gather dust on your shelf.

Reviewed by Dave Wynn for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).