Here are my most recent stats in Burnout: Paradise City. I really haven't been on Criterion's website very much...
Well, I have to take almost a complete 180 from my demo review of Burnout. They took a game that was getting stale, two versions past the last one that I owned, and turned it into a co-op extravaganze that really never seems to get old.
My first complaint was the collecting in the game, but it's really almost too easy to do. With 400 gates to crash through, I've found 396 of them without so much as slowing down. The problem with them and the billboards (which I've also only managed to miss a couple of casually) is that you want to stop what your doing to crash through them. It's slightly addictive.
The radio? Easily turned off, turned down, or picked through for the good tracks.
The open world with no immediate event restart? Okay, that is still a pain in the ass. I hate failing in games even if it's not caused by crappy computer opponents. I've just learned to take my failure, dismiss it and move on. How's that for learning from video games?
The only other thing I despise about the game after playing for this long is that motorcycles can't play with cars (for obvious physics reasons) and the Showtime crash mode just really isn't that intriguing. Yet.
The one thing that did truly suprise me was the online modes. I couldn't see how it was fun to just run around and crash into each other. What the demo didn't do a good job of was showcasing the challenges built into the game for groups of people to do. Obviously it's only better if you have friends willing to do them, otherwise your just sitting there waiting for WhosYurDaddy198 to finish the challenge he doesn't even know he's in.
Since I got the game for $22, it was a little easier to sink my teeth into it without much expectation. I turned around and recommended it for one person and bought it for two others (at $30 each). And not to mention the game recieved the Driving Game of the Year title from the VGAs this week. Something I would have been truly dumbfounded by if I handn't have bought it myself.
More like Burned Out.
This is one my favorite franchises. Burnout. Incredibly fast cars. Amazingly devastating crashes. Really fun online gaming. So when I heard it was going to be put in an online world, people coming and going as they please as if to live in a real city, my hopes shot sky high for what could be the best Burnout ever.
But now, Burnout is a marriage of two games that is teetering on the edge of failure: SSX (collecting stuff, EA Radio) and Test Drive (mapped events to drive to).
The core enjoyment of Burnout was a fight to the finish, kill-them-all-let-God-sort-them-out themed race game. It was simple. Easy to understand. And a hell of a lot of fun. But now you have to find all billboards and gates to crash through and find all the big jumps. Seriously, I'm so tired of games that involve collecting stuff. Why does every game seem to have that these days?
The EA Radio...it was turned off in 5 minutes. I don't care if you turn a hint system or game updates into a radio station. I don't need it.
And sadly, my dreams of the game being a completely open playground for crash scores and races were crushed. You have to drive to all the events on the map to initiate them. This idea was copied from Need for Speed: Underground 2 and Test Drive: Unlimited. Well, everything was copied except for the ability to warp around the map. So if you fail that race that took you 4 miles away from the start, you have to drive your sorry ass back to do it again. That isn't what I call fun. That's rubbing alcohol into the wound.
In the end, this game lacks any imagination on the developers part. There's no reinventing the wheel here, they just took off the stock 15" rims and put on chrome 22" spinners. It still rolls down the road, there's just more flash. When you see it, your only impressed the amount of money the idiot spent on them.
Hey EA, I want my next car to fly. Understand me? FLY! In the air!
This is a typical EA screwup. They make games more intricate, more complicated, and reuse features from other games until they're all the same. Maybe I had too high of hopes for the game since Burnout 1-3 have such a high regard in my mind. People are going to have fun with the game, I'm sure. But I'm tired of the same mechanics that other games have already beat to death.
Paradise? Maybe Spring break in Florida. And there are hardly any virgins there.
