The Importance of Being Idle

Reports Of My Borkage Are Premature

So remember a while back I said that Burnout Revenge was probably borked by the new gameplay twists? Seems I was a little bit hasty there. It certainly takes some getting used to the whole traffic checking thing, but on the plus side it does serve to make things a little safer at the hyper speeds the game moves at. The new courses are a wonder to behold, complex and mutli-tiered, with twisting alternate routes that can be punishingly tricky but immensely rewarding when navigated correctly. The AI seems less irritating so far, I've not seen the AI go whizzing off to some uncatchable lead like it did in Takedown, and whilst the rubberband AI doesn't exactly reward skillful driving as completely as it should, I also see why its there in this particular game and it has made races so far exciting. I think you should also be clear that Burnout hasn't really been a racing game since Point of Impact, its now some peculiar action game that just happens to look like its happening in cars. Speaking of cars, they look absolutely amazing, like the kinda awesome concept cars you see that never get made, and are a great deal more visually exciting than a lot of the officially licensed cars you may see in other games. Also, a lot of the redundancy of multiple cars which are functionally the same has gone and the car selection looks a lot more like Point of Impacts - just the designs are way more refined and exciting and there seem to be tons of them. Crash mode seems vastly improved over last time, although still lacking the perfect simplicity of BO2. The lauch meter is an interesting idea, but also oddly pointless: if you mess up the launch there hardly seems to be any point continuing as your car simply won't go fast enough, so you just restart. Similarly I'm not wildly keen on having to hammer the B button to maximise the crash-breaker, but it works, it keeps you involved in ways you weren't before when you'd just crash and then see how things unfold. That said, I am finding the crash mode an actual challenge this time, rather than just an annoying series of puzzles to be solved, and it pleasingly seems to involve a little creative thought and a touch of good luck. Its certainly addictive, I spent over an hour trying to get gold on just one crash junction early in the game, and was immensely pleased with myself when I did, so overall I'd say its working, and working well. Graphically, the whole game is absolutely stunning, with every bit of design as impressive as the cars themselves, the texturing and effects are truly impressive. Sonically I find it less of a complete triumph, whilst the engines, traffic and explosion effects are great, I controversially like the music less this time round (too many dodgy remixes if you ask me), and I want DJ Stryker back dammit! And yes, I realise I was the only one who liked him. Overall its such an impressive showcase for this generation of consoles I have to wonder why it is the Microsoft are rushing us into the next generation in a few short weeks (well, I know why they're doing it, I just don't think its a good plan and I don't think it'll work).
I haven't got my glasses on right now, and I've cut and pasted so many parts of this trying to re-arrange my thoughts that it probably makes no sense at all now, but as I can't really read it (at least until I can be bothered to get my glasses) you'll just have to put up with any errors there may be. I've got to go and play Bournout some more!
Andele andele! Ariba!

posted by BadMonkey @ 6:04 PM