The original Burnout, and Burnout 2 : Point of Impact were all about insane speed through traffic and spectacular crashes in nice shiny cars making for an immensely satisfying arcade racing experience. Burnout 3 is certainly no exception to this fine pedigree, opting to carry on the family tradition of trashing and thrashing. However this time, the game has been sent into overdrive with even more aggressive driving, more adrenaline pumping action and more vehicular carnage than ever before, and the result is, well, smashing!

The super-charged engine that drives Burnout 3 is the single player mode, known as the Burnout World Tour mode. This is a series of different events played over 3 continents (the USA, Europe & the Far East), each comprising various locations and tracks. The variety and scope of the world tour mode is fantastic, offering over 150 different events to participate in, making for hours and hours of single player gameplay.

Firstly there is a 'standard' race event, which is really anything but standard. In this event, you race against 5 other cars in traffic filled streets, with the basic aim of finishing first to get a gold medal. Sounds simple enough in theory, and it is, if you don't mind losing badly. In practice, success in this event requires you to race very aggressively to fill your burnout meter, which will earn you precious boost, allowing you to hit almost super-sonic speeds and blaze your way to the finish. There are a number of ways to do this - driving on the wrong side of the road, drifting around corners, and narrowly missing bystander vehicles'but the best way is to pick a fight with other competitions. Bump, grind, shunt, ram, and ultimately causing your opponents to crash (called a Takedown) will not only give you boost-juice, it will increase your boost capacity. The more 'Takedowns' you score, the longer you can boost, which is crucial for getting in front and staying that way. Slight variations on this event are the Preview Lap, which is a one-lap solo race against the clock (rewarded with a test drive of a car that you haven't unlocked yet), Grand Prix, which is a set of standard races with points awarded for your placing after each race, and Elimination, where at the end of each lap the last placed car gets eliminated from the race.

Slightly different again is the Road Rage event which is my personal favourite. This event is all about scoring Takedowns and is a whole lot of fun. Opponents will race around the track in packs, enabling you to notch up double and even triple takedowns, and generally cause a lot of carnage, and no doubt earn you a commission from the insurance companies. You'll earn medals depending on how many opponents you trash, but you're never forced to stop if you meet the target'only time and the state of your own ride will cause this mode to end.

There is also face-off mode, which is a 1-on-1 race that if you win, you get to take your opponent's car. The car you are facing off against is generally faster than the one you are driving, so it is a very fast and close race. Also as you progress through the tour mode, you will be invited to 'special events'. These are generally a 'burning lap' race (racing against the clock with loads of extra boost) and you get to race in a special type of car, generally a very fast one.

Last but not least are the Crash events. These are all about pure carnage, where you a put onto a specially set up junction which you need to crash into at the optimal point to cause as much destruction as possible. Crash control is the order of the day here to make sure you position your wreck in the best possible position. Littered along the track are various pickups ' instant boost, cash bonuses, 2x and 4x multipliers that multiply your overall score at the end and instant crashbreaker, which causes an explosion around you. But watch out for the heartbreaker ' pick that one up, and your score gets cut in half! When you reach a set target of wrecks, you get a 'crashbreaker', which when you activate will explode your car and throw it up in the air so that you can steer it around to pick up any bonuses you may have missed and cause even more carnage. The only minor complaint with the crash events is that picking up the 4X multiplier can often make things all too easy, allowing you to rack up absolutely massive scores. However, overall the variety in these events is outstanding, with loads of cars, trucks, buses and other vehicle to slam into. It's Mayhem with a capital M!

One of the best additions to the game is Aftertouch. When you get in a crash, you can hold down the A button and go into slow motion Impact Time. You are then able to take control of your wreck and guide it around. You can use this time to get more burnout points by causing as much extra damage as possible, or steer your wreck into your opponents to score an Aftertouch Takedown, which will instantly fill your boost bar back up so you can speed away from the crash scene and make up for lost time.

If this isn't enough for you, as you progress through the game you can also obtain several different awards for your Takedowns. These are for things such as your first double Takedown, first signature Takedown, scoring 20 Takedowns in a race and much more. Also, your total burnout points, crash dollars and Takedown totals are tallied after every race, and when you hit certain targets you can unlock new cars.

Overall, the single player gameplay is outstanding. Highly addictive, adrenaline pumping and fast, it will probably have you screaming expletives at your TV, thrashing your body around and quite possibly throwing your controller around the room. The AI in the game is quite finely tuned, and at times extraordinarily difficult. I don't count this as a bad thing, as having difficult AI is quite essential in a game such as this, to keep up the pace and addictiveness. The controls are easy to pick up, with the only downside being the inability to change the control mapping. This would have been nice to include, as sometimes because you are playing the game so much you can wind up with cramps in your trigger finger! The only real complaint I would have is that you are unable to save your crashes for replay later and it really would have been nice for them to include this option. Saving and sharing replays online was one of the few redeeming features in Driver3 and it would have been incredible in Burnout 3 if Criterion had included it.

On the multiplayer side of things, there are loads of options. There are 5 different offline player modes - race, road rage, team crush (two players joining together to create big crashes), double impact (compete to get the most crash $) and party crash mode, where up to 8 players can play singly or co-operatively to cause big smashes. These are heaps of fun and while I only tested these modes with one other player, I can't wait to invite some friends around and have a go at the party crash mode.

Xbox Live is also a welcome inclusion in the game, and for the most part is not too bad. You can play the different multiplayer modes online, with the exception of playing co-operatively within the party crash mode. Why this wasn't included I don't know but it certainly would have been nice.

Since the game comes from Electronic Arts, the Live component uses EA's servers rather than the standard Xbox ones. When playing over a few sessions, several problems with their set up were definitely noticeable. Somewhat frustratingly, every time you start a new session you have to log back into EA's servers which while this happens automatically it extends the time it takes to get in and out of races. Also, there were loads of problems with the rankings updates, with the rankings often refusing to update. In one session when hooked up with Xbox World staff we also had problems with the voice chat, with some players totally unable to hear others, as well as crackly voices coming through at times. In this same session the rankings refused to update three or four times for some players, and we occasionally met with a message saying our account had been temporarily locked! Thankfully though, there was no noticeable lag in the actual games. I really hope that these are just teething problems with the relatively new servers and that the online side may have these glitches ironed out at some point. Overall however the online play is a lot of fun, and I guess we can at least be thankful that it has been included at all but why it isn't Xbox Live Aware i'll never know.

Graphically, the game is outstanding, particularly considering that it is cross platform. It does just about everything right ' high frame rate, great looking cars and scenery and provides an awesome sense of high speed. Attention to detail with the models and background is excellent. The physics of the game are obviously not realistic given the nature of the game, but they are however consistent and there's loads of crates, signs and other items littering the tracks that you can slam through.

It is the crash sections of the game that really show off the graphics best. There is just so much detail in the crash sequences that you can't help but gawk at the screen in awe. Metal twists, bits fly off, there are sparks galore, and when you crash into a truck carrying loads such as crates and logs, the load ends up all over the road. It really gives you a great sense of the mayhem that you are causing. Again it is such as shame that you are unable to save crash replays, as you could probably have a lot of fun watching them over and over again, and noticing all of the fine detail that has gone into the animations. The biggest problem though is that by the time you hit the sports cars (not literally!) you will be speeding along so fast that you won't have time to drink in the gorgeous scenery without risking a high-speed collision with it!

The sound and music are also excellent, as befits the overall good quality of the game. The sounds of twisting and grinding metal in the crashes are realistically painful, the exhaust sounds have a lot of grunt and on a 5.1 sound system the positioning of sounds is marvellous. The only annoying part with the sound is the 'Crash FM' DJ that pops up throughout the game, who has a somewhat grating American accent. Luckily though you have the option to switch this guy off if you like, though he can be helpful at first, chirping in with track-related info, such as good Takedown locations or where to watch out for trams.

The music is basically a collection of 44 punk and rock tracks, including tracks from such luminaries as The Ramones, Ash, Pennywise and Franz Ferdinand. If you like punk music, you'll love the soundtrack. If punk music isn't your thing though, thankfully custom soundtracks are supported so you can simply change it to something that you have ripped to your hard drive.