Burnout Paradise Review

When has there been a time that I didn’t agree with crashing beautiful and expensive cars? Ah, yes, real life. Thanks to Burnout Paradise, gamers can now treat their gas pedal-happy hearts with crashing, jumping, racing, drifting, burning, and the ability to defy physics by turning your car over and wreaking havoc throughout Paradise City. Sound good? If it doesn’t, then let me elaborate for you on this great addition to a beloved franchise.

In the beginning of the game, you start out with a broken and beaten car, but have no fear, because the “drive-right-thru” repair shop will fix that up for you. These repair shops can become vital to you in races when your car has been taken down or has wrecked several times, but when in free roam, the damage taken is merely cosmetic. Unlike the past Burnout games, Paradise is completely open world with the given ability to start races, stunt trials, a survival game called Marked Man, and Road Rage where the objective is to take as many cars out until you die. To start an event, just look on your mini map and drive to said marked event.

The races are pretty straight-forward where you start at one point and get to another. You have a choice on what routes you take to arrive at the end, but take precautions on which ones will get you there, because every millisecond counts. In Stunt Run, you get as many points as you can by getting air, crashing through billboards, drifting and doing barrel rolls. Marked Man is basically a race, you just aren’t against anyone, but you can’t wreck or get taken down, so take your time and stay comfortable. The most amusing event for me is Road Rage, where you take down a number of cars before you die. The difficulty is a little easier than a race or Stunt Run however it isn’t too large of an issue. The reason you wish to win these objectives is to gain new vehicles and upgrade your drivers’ license and get more new vehicles… that and achievement points, which are a guilty pleasure of my own and plenty others. The one other mode that has also been added is Showtime where you press the bumpers and your car just turned into a rolling metal deathball. The objective is to create as much damage as possible for as long as possible. It may sound completely awesome on paper, but when a car is bouncing around the city for as long as seven minutes, you seem to forget that this is a racing game that you’re playing.

Sure, you want to see the sites. That’s the reason you are taking a vacation in Paradise City, right? The visuals are pretty when the cars are pretty and gritty when they’re gritty. Paradise’s graphics still don’t match up to Forza 2’s, but they certainly get the job done for a jam packed game. You won’t get a ton of time to admire the scenery when the annoying voice of DJ Atomica enters your mind every ten seconds or so. I swear EA could have gotten a better guy for free. I would rather have a homeless man who can hardly make complete sentences so I would actually be humored. You do, for the most part have the option to rid the “tips” voice, but DJ Atomica doesn’t die easy.

The online works seamlessly with the single player, so if you want to take down your buds or some random 12 year old, just press right on the D-Pad. There are a ton of online challenges and they can be fun or just plain frustrating. If youIf you A. Love Burnout, B. Like games, or C. Enjoy cars, you should definitely check out Burnout Paradise.

I Don't Know What I Want!

You see, there comes a time every year for everyone (except people born on February 29) where they will experience a "birthday". So, what is this "birthday," you ask? I shouldn't need to answer anything you ask me unless there is an emergancy where your hot sister needs to find the remote or if you know what madness relating to Care Bears that will happen in 2012... I'll cut to the chase now. My birthday is coming up this Sunday and there isn't a whole lot of things I want, except maybe an iPod Touch which is out of financial reach. There is Turok, Devil May Cry 4, and Lost Odyssey out, but the reviews aren't too Great* (Turok 7.5, DMC4 8.0, Lost Odyssey 7.5) I know that no one reads and comments on this, but oppinions on worthy games that make me feel what Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock made me feel. I really shouldn't worry about gifts, but I want to be able to go to my awesome GP's (sweet grandparent acronymn) and tell them *insert game/gift title here* IS TEH FUN!

Among the nagging on my B-Day gifts, I would also like to discuss some news in games. If you liked Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, then you'll be happy to know that there is a sequel coming! This is actually surprising considering the distribution issue of the Marvel licenses with numerous publishers. The only information that was given was really only the announcment, but that's good enough for me.

In more Marvel related news, the Marvel MMO for the 360 and PC was recently canceled. Of course, Microsoft didn't specifically say the reasons, but in Studio Head, Shane Kim's words, "it was a mutual decision". Personally, I don't think the game wouldn't have been such a huge success, because World of Warcraft has pretty much made a monopoly in the MMO world. The game would also have to be better than WoW to even compete with it. And competition is most definately is a factor in this destruction of Deadpool sidekick want-to-be's, but Microsoft doesn't admit defeat. They buy it (Yahoo). Plus, this makes me wonder if this was the canceled first-party game that 1UP's Shane Bettenhausen was reffering to sometime last year... Interesting.

My favorite tidbit of fun this week so far is another rumor of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3. A lineup was "revealed" after the announcement of a new Lord of the Rings game developed by another EA owned studio, Pandemic who made games such like Mercenaries and Star Wars: Battlefront. It lists BioWare developed "Mass Effect**, Dragon Age, KOTOR, [and a] New MMO." It would be amazing if they are working on some new KOTOR, but the list also "confirms" that it isn't the new MMO that BioWare is working on... Man, what's up with every developer needing an MMO? Anyway, that's exciting to me because an online-style Knights game would be mucking with the formula of the genius that the original was. As of right now though, it's still just a rumor, but anything can happen.

I hope I get some ice cream cake...

*Great, according to Gamespot's rating system
**the PC version, which is due in May

A Bad Case of Delay Syndrome

Let's all go back to July or August of last year. What we knew about the second half of 2007 was pretty much: dude, lotsa games. The amazing new ones and sequels of beloved franchises were going to nuke the world with a bomb that could litterally wipe out everything in our wallets. At the time, all these games in one heaping bowl full seemed like a good thing, but then we realized maybe there's too much. "Madness," we said, but it was. Some games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto IV, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Mercenaries 2--big franchises--were delayed into Early 2008. SSBB was only experiencing its first delay from December to February, then another delay into March. Metal Gear Solid 4 was constantly delayed, from Holiday '07 to Spring '08 and then, Summer. And just recently, Mercs 2 experienced a huge delay from Q1 2008, all the way to sometime in 2009! How do you measure the completion time with a range from the first quarter of this year to freakin' 2009?!

Maybe I'm just complaining to much, but seriously. "Too much stuff coming soon" is not a good excuse for delaying your game. If anyone out there is delaying their games to later times so they can make their quarterly earnings seem impressive, and I'm sure there are (yeah, EA) I look at you in shame. It also seems to me that delaying a game sometimes just gives it more hype and a little time to relax and change the sound levels very marginally on the footstep noises, when you look at it. Remember how many times that Zelda: Twilight Princess was delayed? Me either, but that hype was amazing. Most of it was mainly because that the game was more Zelda, however, I do believe that the delays had something to do with it.

I only wish that more publishers would be less grubby when it comes to money and hype over their product. Maybe they should start caring about something better for a change, like pleasing the customers without hassling them with confusion and waiting on something that's just sitting in the freezer waiting to be devoured... I really love how I just said thinking that it's going to happen anytime soon.

Bowling For 18-UNO

As most of you should know, the most viewed event on television was on yesterday. No, not the Oscars (obviously... last years was a snooze) but the Super Bowl! Any time between the season opener and Super Bowl was a happy time for the Patriots and their fans. They were 18-0, going on to make NFL history, but Tom Brady's looks weren't enough to get them past the Giants' Michael Strahan and his (their) spectacular defense. And might I say, Strahan is a monster and for a linebacker, very intelligent. Just kidding about the linebacker thing though.

Overall, I would give last night's game a 9 out of 10 and it does help, that the Patriots lost 14 to 17 with Eli's amazing game finishing play. Wow... Two Manning Super Bowl MVP's in a row. That's got to be a perfect family.

Anyway, I enjoyed that game much more than last years, considering it was the "biggest upset" in Super Bowl history. Well, it certainly was the most watched Super Bowl ever with 97.5 million people glued (at least a bit) to their TVs.

Next year, I predict the top 4 teams of next year to be my favorite team, the Seatle Seahawks, the San Diego Chargers, the Carolina Panthers, and the Indianapolis Colts. Seahawks FTW.

Let Me Introduce Myself.

I guess I finally got around to making a actual blog site compared Gamespot's or 1up's. Their features were bringing me down so I decided, heck, why not make my own? If you don't know me (and the odds are quite slim) then let me introduce myself and my inability to give a crap about Jamie Lynn's pregnancy.

My name is Andrew, and my non-nerdy handles include Systech217 (XBL), IKKF (Gamespot). I'm not fat or ugly, but rather tall, skinny and quite dashing. I am still underage (let's say about 15-18), but my IQ of 137 speaks for itself. Spending money is a rare occasion for me, and I don't play a whole bunch of new games, but if you bring one or two up I might be able to tell you about them in spontaneous detail, but that's mainly because I don't have much else to do outside my house (sad, huh?) Well what do you expect from a minor who's passion is games and is writing on this site at this moment.

Keeping this intro post short is in my best intrest, considering the subject is me, and I don't appreciate giving stalkers too much insight on my whereabouts and emotions. Look for more from me soon.