Crashing...? Nah, Its Just Stopping With Style

I recently revisited my PS Store download of Burnout Paradise after my friend, (the one with the other blog. I suggest you read it) reminded me about it. And I finally realised what was wrong with it. It just wasn't Burnout.

Now I began my love affair with Burnout with arguably the best in the series, Burnout 3: Takedown. Now Revenge was a technically better game, but it lacked the fun and craziness of Takedown. It also lacked the splitscreen mulitplayer fun that was present in 3, and so immediately lost points as that was what held the most appeal.

And I will admit that Revenge was fun. Not as good, but fun nonetheless. It had basically the same setup as 3; you pick an area, you pick a race, you drive, you crash, you earn boost and you collect better cars.

But what Paradise has done is made this free-roaming. Bad, bad move. I dislike games which claim sandbox play as it smacks of "Like Grand Theft Auto, but..."; a plague which has blighted games of late and must be eradicated with extreme prejudice. I would even go so far to say that "LGTA,B..." is the gaming equivalent of Nazism. It has great potential, but underneath is really racist, intolerant and megolomanical to the point of insanity. I am not saying that GTA is Hitler, but perhaps one of the lesser dictators; Mugabe perhaps. Or Kim Jong-Il. Stalin at a push.

It lacks the structure of the previous games; which I liked. I don't want to aimlessly drive around to find a race. I want to just pick one, and race. Maybe I'm being too cynical. After all it means that it is a free-flowing world with a variety of options open to the player. This is good. This means that I don't have to be told what to do, when to do it and how I should go about killing people. I like that. Want to use an RPG? Great do it! Want to stick C4 to people's back? Go right ahead! However this new fangled open world idea doesn't work in Paradise. It frustrates me; more so than the woolly car physics. Now correct me if I am wrong, which I am not so don't bother, racing games generally use cars. A lot. So why do the cars in BP feel like a sofa on those little wheels? Why do they float rather than drive? Laziness I think.

Now it is only a demo, I'll admit that. But if you want to tempt me into buying your game by force feeding me shite, I will not look upon it favourably.
And this brings me neatly on to Gran Turismo. Well, I say Gran Turismo; in fact it is half of Gran Turismo. In order to increase sales, they release half of the game a bit before to get people interested. Why? Why in hell would I pay £25 for half a game, when the ACTUAL game isn't too far off? Craziness perhaps.

Now I am sure that if I loved this game as much as I love Metal Gear, I may fork out perhaps £20 in order to get a taster. But, and you can call me cheap, £25 is too much. I am aware that the PS Store price is grossly inflated, and it is generally sold in shops for £20 or so pounds. But as I am not a GT lover, I could not justify the price.

So I'll stick with Burnout 3. Its fun, its cheap, and because I was sensible and bought a PS3 at launch, I have backwards compatibility as well.

Yay for me.