Video Games Suck - Burnout: Paradise City

Not satisfied with fucking up one franchise (Command and Conquer), EA goes ahead and guts another one...

Fuck it feels like an eternity sitting here in Frankfurt airport. If I were to do a review of this airport it would start with 'Hell is the impossibility of comfortable travel'. To help pass the time I'll do a review of Criterion's latest incarnation, Burnout Paradise City: a pathetic attempt to mix racing cars with a sandbox engine. The city doesn't actually look like a paradise (looks like Los Angelas on steroids), it's just that they have that 'take me down to the paradise city' song in there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they did a google search for 'song' and 'city', and Paradise City is the first one that came up. Oh, and in case you're wondering, this game blows.

Graphics: The graphics just look weird. They're not bad, but you can tell they're cheap. The buildings don't have as much detail as they could, and when you get out to the country side, you just start to wonder how it is that Crysis can generate this massive map with multiple oponents, and destructible environments, and this game has one fuckin road and you can't go drive on the grass.

Sound: Fuck me, the music in this game sucks ass. The only good one is Rockstar by N.E.R.D. I like the Girlfriend one by Avril Lavine, but I feel gay just saying that. Thank god you have an option to drop out whatever songs you don't like, so you just get an endless loop of Rockstar. I noticed that the engine sounds were distinctively gayer than they were in Burnout Revenge (the prequel).

Gameplay: Holy shit, what is it with developers going out of their way to incorporate bad elements into sequels? It's like they gutted the previous game, and deliberately fucked me over. The biggest problem with this game is that you can crash into everything. And believe me, you will. You will crash into oncoming traffic, sameway traffic, crossing traffic, parked traffic, a seemingly flat parallel wall, a lamp post inconviently placed at the end of a jump, the ceiling of a parking lot, a pillar placed in the middle of the road for no functional purpose, EVERYTHING. They should've called this game Crash Paradise. And you don't even have the impact time and crashbreaker from Revenge. So when you crash, every 13 seconds, you'll sit there staring at the cut scene which might as well come out from the screen and slap you in the face. Ironically, the crash mode has been taken out of the game, so you don't have as many modes. Traffic check has also been removed because, well, you can no longer check traffic. This is so gay. I'm so mad. Oh, and they don't have split screen. WTF?!?!? My friend is supposed to watch me play? And the idiots over at criterion had the ingenious idea of not rotating the radar with you, so if you're blasting down the street doing $%&! mph, you have to figure out whether east is right or left. And by the time you figure it out, you've already crashed into a car/a wall/ a tree.

Story: I don't think there is any story. Just that you are in some city (for seemingly no reason), and you have to drive around like shit until you get your full license...I think they were trying to do some Tony Hawk angle, but failed miserably.

It's good for the first few hours, but then you crash into every fucking corner of every street until you want to pull your hair out. And there is no split screen, oh and it's impossible to figure out where you are, and where you have to go b/c every street looks the exact same! 6/10