The Making of "Burnout Paradise" review...Part 4

Going from grade B to A is certainly taking a lot longer than all of my upgrades before it. It’s also making me wonder what else does this game have to offer. Just adding one more to my required take downs or adding more points to a stunt total isn’t really that exciting. Early on I found I either hammered those modes or failed miserably. I quickly racked up 30 takedowns on an event that only required 8. So once the event is then made “harder” by putting it up to 9 takedowns it doesn’t seem to add more to the challenge.

I have more than got the hang of not hitting restart when I muck up a race and trying something else, with one exception. The burning routes. These are car specific events where a timed dash to the finish unlocks a special version of the car you are in. As far as I can tell there is only one location for each of these, so if you fail it’s a long trek back. When you find yourself switching between cars a lot it makes sense to want to do these before you change and it has become a bit of a chore on the harder routes. My solution would be to put another start point at the end. It gets around not having the “restart” option but doesn’t leave failures as overly punished.

I have finally got into doing normal races and my latest quick tip is to use the road guide at the top. When you are driving to a junction the road names will converge to show you when the turn is about to hit. If you are then in a race the “best” route will flash telling you to turn. This means I am no longer spending most of my time staring at the mini map and pausing to check my route!

I’m hoping once I get to class A the game starts offering me some new types of events. If this is all the game has to offer I am beginning to get a little fatigued….I want something new! Not just a car with a couple of higher stats.

The making of "Pixel Junk Monsters" review...Part 2

Well I lost my perfectionist bug, mainly because this game gets hard!! Sometimes takes me a few goes just to complete the level let alone do it perfectly! Hard does not mean it isn’t fun though, finding the correct solution is rewarding. What you start to realise is this is more like a puzzle game than desktop defence, in the sense that there is a right answer. Obviously you can have slight variations but by and large there is one “right” way to do a level. So this creates a lot of trial and error, especially when a wave of monsters turns up that you were not expecting.

I have just completed all the easy and medium levels and need to perfect one more level to have access to the hard ones. I’m starting to wonder at what point should I review this game? While I am having a lot of fun with it I can see it taking a while to complete all the levels, and that’s not a bad thing but I can see myself not being able to make it. The fact is I feel I have easily had my moneys worth but is that the threshold at which something should be reviewed? I have completed the main story of every game so far before I reviewed them, but those games were largely story driven compared to this. This game has been great for playing for a few minutes at a time, trying new strategies to crack a level. I wouldn’t be upset with my purchase if I never completed another level again. So I must weigh up should I complete every remaining level before I give this game a 500 word treatment or not? For now I will play on.

The making of "Burnout Paradise" review...Part 3

Burnout is opening up more and more as I play it like any game should. Progress seems quick, but without seeming too easy. I’m beginning to understand how the game works now. Now I see that although there are set event types at Junction (Race, Stunt Run, Take down etc) they are not fixed by their goals. What I mean by that is that if you have just done a 12,000 point stunt run the next stunt run event you find will be 15,000. It means you never find an even that is way above your skill level or well below, perfect!

Possibly my favourite feature is the way you gain new cars. New cars are set loose on the world and if you drive around a little bit it will zoom past and you take pursuit. The game always seems to make the prize automobile whiz past from a different direction to you. I could just imagine other games simply having the car sidle up along side you or ask “Would you like to chase?”, but Burnout gives you this really visceral way of making your choice by slamming on the hand brake. Then you are definitely in the mood to chase!

Now at the mighty Grade C I am very excited to see how the game continues to open up to me and what other secrets it has hiding away.

My only real gripe so far is having to drive all the way to a Junk yard to change my car to a more suitable one. Maybe I just need to find more ‘yards to drive through.

I also want to give online a go, and I jumped in with some randoms but I really didn’t know what was going on. So if anyone fancies playing a bit of Burnout online and showing me some of the ropes I would much appreciate it. Just got myself a Bluetooth headset so I am ready to talk rubbish in game as well as on my blog!

My PSN is glennpfc so drop me an invite and we can trash some of Paradise city.

The making of "Burnout Paradise" review...Part 2

So the big Cagney update finished installing and I booted up Burnout Paradise. My impressions after my first race event left me sceptical. I was finding the same problems I had with GTA4s open races. I spend so much time staring at the mini map that I really can’t take in the city. It feels more like I’m playing Pacman watching my little dot move around its map. I finish last and the game continues where I finished my race, miles away from the start! It will be a long way driving back to the beginning! It’s going to take a while to get out of the “Pause, Restart” mentality I usually abide by with racing games…Its just not available here.

So after my abysmal first race I thought I would carry on exploring and the next thing I knew 3 hours had gone by and I had not even attempted another event. There are so many things to find and smash around the environment that I got sidetracked looking for them. Shortcut fences greeting me with SMASH! 33/400 found messages were too hard to just drive past. Then there are the giant Burnout billboards, SMASH! 3/120!

So I thought I would brave it and attempt another event. All events are located at each traffic light intersection in the game just rev your wheels with R2 and L2 and you are off! “Road Rage, take down 3 enemy cars.” This is more like it! Now instead of staring at the map trying to be a human sat-nav I can just focus on smashing the shit out of my fellow drivers. 23 “Takedowns” (the result of a successful enemy smash) later and I am up one event win!

I’m starting to understand the decision not to let me restart races now. It encourages you to explore. If you fail an event, don’t drive back to start it again, just jump into the nearest one! With every hour I play I am beginning to enjoy this more and more…I'm beginning to believe the hype!

The making of "Burnout Paradise" review...Part 1

I know I am a bit late to the party on this, but after seeing it online for £20 I thought I would take the plunge. Literally just put the game in and am greeted with a nice 350mb download. Nice big free Cagney update :-) I don’t really like to wait, but I am sure I can find something to do while it downloads (Like write this).

Wait is almost over….wooo!

The making of "Pixel Junk Monsters" review...Part 1

I Just went online and bought Pixel Junk Monsters off the PSN store (accidentally, I was just trying to see how much it was!) Played through the first couple of levels and so far I am really enjoying it.

The game is largely inspired by Desktop Tower Defense. A game that had me hooked for almost a week not so long ago. So I would recommend anyone to go and play that free flash game first to get the feel of what PJM is all about.

My first quick tip is probably an obvious one but "Dance the towers" (which I would have known had I read the How To Play menu). Your towers need upgrading to make them more powerful and instead of standing over them to build them up, I was waisting valuable gems collected from the monsters. So in fact my actual first quick tip will just be “read the damn how to play menu”.

I’m finding myself getting the old perfectionist bug that rears its ugly head from time to time. See if you complete a level without letting a single monster through you are rewarded with a rainbow, as soon as one baddy gets through I immediately hit restart and go about tweaking my strategy. Many games I am happy enough to bomb through and just enjoy, but every now and then a game compels me to complete it with 100%, all gold, nothing left to do….I fear this may be one of those games.

Got my girlfriend to play a few levels with me and it was good fun, although I took the PS3 to hers and was playing on a 26” SD TV (as opposed to my usual 32” Widescreen HD set up) and that made it a lot harder to explain the game. So while we still had fun this game is a lot easier to play on a bigger HD screen. Slightly ironic as it is probably the least graphically impressive PSN game I have, not to say it doesn’t look good. It is artistic and stylised more than it is draw droppingly pretty. So I would advise to avoid playing this on a small screen if you can help it.

So far I am having a lot of fun and I have at least had my £3.50s worth!