Burnout Paradise

[Zeus]

I d'loaded the demo and it was ridiculously fun. They have this island and you just drive around it. No loading times, no preset modes, no nothing. You wanna do a race? Go to a stoplight and activiate it (L and R triggers at the same time). You wanna try to do some of the mini games, like finding all of the billboards to smash through? Go ahead, find them. You wanna race with others? Click a button and bam, they appear beside you. No setup, no lobby, no nothing.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?optio ... 8&Itemid=2

If it works nearly as well as it sounds and takes the idea from the demo and does it properly, it could be one of the coolest racers ever and one of the best interfaces for gaming - online or off - that we've seen.

[Shellie]

I have Burnout Revenge and absolutely love it! One of my only complaints is load time though, so Paradise will be mine!

[Sephy]

It does look pretty awesome. Might be the first racer (well, any car game), I pick up in awhile.

[Blotus]

Demo was pretty rad. I loved Burnout 3.

[SineSwiper]

PA addressed some potential shortcomings of this interface:

There's no way to simply "retry" a race after you've failed it, for example. I understand that this is an "open world," and this world is also my menu system, but despite what they might believe in their hearts I don't want to drive two or three scale miles to select Retry.

This would really suck for the car crash events, as I retry those things about 20-30 times, and it only takes me about 5 seconds to retry one.

I predict this will be one of those things like the Wii controller. Yeah, it looks neat and cool, but sometimes people just want to hit buttons, because that is the fastest and easiest way to do it.

[Zeus]

PA addressed some potential shortcomings of this interface:

There's no way to simply "retry" a race after you've failed it, for example. I understand that this is an "open world," and this world is also my menu system, but despite what they might believe in their hearts I don't want to drive two or three scale miles to select Retry.

This would really suck for the car crash events, as I retry those things about 20-30 times, and it only takes me about 5 seconds to retry one.

I predict this will be one of those things like the Wii controller. Yeah, it looks neat and cool, but sometimes people just want to hit buttons, because that is the fastest and easiest way to do it.

I'm not a lazy consumer. Hit me with innovation and let's see what we can really do with this medium of ours. Sure it's gonna have its shortcomings but we need to try. The Wiimote may not be perfect for everything (what controller is? If you say the PSX/PS2/PS3 just don't bother replying) but there's some awesome stuff on it you can't do any other way. Same with this game. There are gonna be some shortcomings to it but from what I can see from the demo, there's gonna be far more good than bad.

Usually people will say "I can't do everything exactly or as good as I can do now" and dismiss things. That's an extremely shortsighted way or looking at things. If something makes things better 80% of the time even 10% of the time and worse 10% of the time it don't make it bad. That's I think where this particular thing might be going with Burnout and has definitely gone with the Wii controller (although 80%'s a bit too high the interface to me is still better, just needs more work). Sure you can't just restart your race again immediately, but the game is all about exploring....on your way back, do something else or explore the island a bit more. It's so chock full of stuff that you can't possibly get bored for a long time....unless all you want to do is the same thing over and over again without exploring the game.

This is EA innovating.....give them a reason to keep doing it. Give the entire industry a reason to keep doing it, we need it otherwise we're just gonna be playing the exact same games for the next 20 years. Try it and judge the ENTIRE game, don't dismiss it based on one thing or just because it's trying to show you a new way to do things.

[Blotus]

The Wiimote may not be perfect for everything (what controller is?

[Zeus]

The Wiimote may not be perfect for everything (what controller is?

Heh, that was a pretty bad controller, although not Jaguar-bad....

[Blotus]

That's the other I considered posting.

[SineSwiper]

Zeus is the same person who liked Mario 64 because it was innovating. Nowadays, 3D is alright because we've learned all of the lessons from hundreds (thousands?) of failed mistakes.

Fine, it's innovating, but it doesn't mean I have to like everything about it. If you invent too far, you'll realize that it's completely untested ground. Nobody likes first-generation stuff unless it's tested and tested and tested well. By then, you really can't call it first-generation.

[Zeus]

Zeus is the same person who liked Mario 64 because it was innovating. Nowadays, 3D is alright because we've learned all of the lessons from hundreds (thousands?) of failed mistakes.

Fine, it's innovating, but it doesn't mean I have to like everything about it. If you invent too far, you'll realize that it's completely untested ground. Nobody likes first-generation stuff unless it's tested and tested and tested well. By then, you really can't call it first-generation.

Didn't I CLEARLY say that "you look at it on a whole, not focusing on one or two things"? You don't have to like everything about it, you just have to look at it as an overall package rather than saying "I can't just hit reset, therefore this sucks".

Since Mario 64 there have only been a handful of 3D platforming games that can be considered as good. Sure it wasn't perfect but I also didn't say "oh, the camera doesn't do EXACTLY what I want when I want even though I can control it", I said "OK, I can deal with the camera, the rest of the game KICKS ASS". I took it as a package and it's STILL one of the best 3D platformers, THAT's how good it was.

[RentCavalier]

Banjo-Kazooie>>>Mario 64

[Blotus]

Banjo-Kazooie>>>Mario 64

Get out.

[RentCavalier]

Banjo-Kazooie>>>Mario 64

Get out.

Oh, come on--Mario 64 hasn't really aged that well. It's got a horrible camera, and punching shit is a pain in the ass, not to mention how cumbersome it was to swim or do anything more than run and jump--and even then, the N64 Controller is so freaking uncomfortable that it was very easy to accidently fall off mountains.

Banjo Kazooie is, effectively, everything Mario 64 was, but funnier, tighter, prettier and more controlled, allowing a greater range of abilities and freedoms as well as establishing some of the best 3-D platforming segments of the whole "collect a shit-ton of shiny stuff" era.

[Zeus]

I will concede that it is a better overall game but Banjo's camera is worse than Mario's

[Blotus]

The camera is horrible, and the swimming parts are annoying as hell. Otherwise, I think it's aged pretty well. I've been playing bits of it over the last couple of weeks.

Goldeneye, on the other hand, has aged HORRIBLY. I was playing some of the missions, and some of them are so dark/blurry that you can't even see what's shooting you even if you look right in that direction (specifically, one of the jungle levels). I know WHY I loved Goldeneye back in the day, but today it's just garbage.