I was all set to give this game a perfect 5 and say it's one of my favorites of all time. I remember sinking hours into it in high school, rocking to the killer pop-punk soundtrack, trying crashes over and over to get gold, ramming cars left and right, feeling awesome and lightning-fast and invincible.

Old age has soured me, though, it seems; because while the core gameplay of Burnout 3 is still, truly, S-Tier, it has a set of undeniable annoyances that keep it from true masterpiece status.

First: the AI is questionable at best, with one racer often flying ahead 10-15 seconds if you crash a single time, and other racers remaining in an easily-beatable pack; so that even if you get a takedown or two and fill your meter, there's a whole lot of nothing between you and the leader, and often, especially on a short course, you're never able to catch up.

Similarly, if YOU manage to take and hold the lead, you'll often have someone right on your ass the entire race, so that one poorly timed-screw-up near the end of the course spells doom. Given that nothing really fills your boost meter substantially except for takedowns, being in 1st position often feels worse than it should, as you simply can't have the fun the game wants you to have by crashing into other cars. You just kind of nervously drive along and try not to crash, which is the OPPOSITE of how Burnout should feel.

Second: load times are LONG. This is more of a nitpick, but it added up over the course of my playthrough. I found myself not wanting to even bother with the crash sections of World Tour, because to get gold takes at least a few retries, and every retry there's about 5-10 seconds of loading. While seemingly insignificant, this REALLY bummed me out, because I remember crash junctions being one of the most fun parts of the game, and on this playthrough I just found them irritating more than anything.

Third: Traffic. I love the game's utilization of risk/reward, and the option to drive in oncoming traffic is often enticing and satisfying; however, if I want to just BURN through a course, I feel like I should be able to do it in the right lane without worrying so much about hitting anything. The tradeoff is, there's no boost to be built there! And sure, maybe there are cars to weave through. But the traffic in this game travels at what feels like 5mph, so that cars in the right lane feel just as much like perilous obstacles as oncoming cars. Often you'll hit a great drift around a corner and come smashing into some dumb sedan that's crawling along the road. If they were going a bit faster, you'd have more lead time to see and dodge them, which seems like it'd make for a better game feel.

Fourth: the aftertouch system simply doesn't work. It's a shame, because it's such a cool idea and it feels so good when you do manage to clip another car post-crash, but without control of the camera it amounts to 90% guesswork and luck.

Fifth (and lastly): given that the game relies so heavily on that balance between risk and reward, it feels shitty that, when you definitively cause a takedown but you crash a second or so later, you don't get credit for said takedown. This happened way too much throughout my playthrough, and I hated it every time.

That all sounds like a lot of downside, but it really only amounts to about a star's worth. The heart of this game--the ultra-smooth controls, the blazing speeds, the buttery framerate, the mega-satisfying takedowns, the rockin' tunes--more than make up for its few faults. I just remembered it being absolutely perfect, and it ain't.