Burnout Revenge, the fourth in the series (i think?) is, on the Xbox 360, effectively an up-resed xbox/ps2 game. Having bought the ps2 version after having played the 360 version but prior to owning a 360, I can tell you the 360 version is way better.
All the little details are better utilized and developed.
It also looks great. As good as Paradise or Gran Turismo? No way, but it looks sharp, has a smooth framerate and it's fast as hell. It's also an order of magnitude better than Burnout Paradise. As much as I respect everything they've done DLC-wise to make Paradise awesome, I still hate the open-world mechanic. I hate open worlds in general because instead of taking the fun part of a game and just giving you that, they let you do all the boring stuff too, like getting from place to place.
Revenge does everyting better than Paradise. To start with, the driving is simple. Gas, Brake and Boost. No handbrake nonsense, and no need to ever ever take your finger off the gas, for any reason. The arcadey feel for speed and control is superb.
Then there's different signature takedowns for each course, different kinds of takedowns (including my favorite: landing on top of your rival), and you can take down at least four opponents at once, which is rare, but I did it and it felt fantastic. This game is actually why I'm so hard on Paradise, which is in and of itself a fantastic racer. But Revenge is better. It's more focused, more compartmentalized and very much more menu driven, which is the only downer. Not that the menus are bad, just that after every race the "you did this good" screen isn't skippable and like most games, I just wanna get back in and play.
That is my only complaint about it though. I bought a "like-new" copy off Amazon the other day for $15 shipped cos I thought I lost my old one. It was over at Purdy Teeth's house. I wish I had known that when I was sitting around doing nothing while the wife was out of town.
4 stars.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Recession Reviews: Crackdown
Due to the utter slop that calls itself the games of 2009 so far I have bought exactly 1 game: Resident Evil 5. Having milked that one to death (1000 GP to be specific), I decided rather than go out and get Prototype or Infamous and be unhappy with how Crackdown does X or Y better I'd just fire up crackdown and achievement whore.
Turns out I made a good decision. My old old copy of crackdown is still fantastically fun, and doubly so when I got Gorgeous Hair to play online. We decided to call our session quits at 1am last night, but for the next hour neither of us signed off. We just jumped around the city and accomplished nothing, and we had a great time doing it.
My middling complaints about the game still hold up (lack of bosses, touchy controls), but it does so much right that every other game does wrong, and at least until Prototype and Infamous came out was the only sandbox game that understood a game should be a game first and a life simulator second. It's still fantastic fun to climb all the tall buildings, to launch an attack on a boss and to generally raise hell.
You can easily find it for under $20 shipped, and it's still a solid 3 star game.
Turns out I made a good decision. My old old copy of crackdown is still fantastically fun, and doubly so when I got Gorgeous Hair to play online. We decided to call our session quits at 1am last night, but for the next hour neither of us signed off. We just jumped around the city and accomplished nothing, and we had a great time doing it.
My middling complaints about the game still hold up (lack of bosses, touchy controls), but it does so much right that every other game does wrong, and at least until Prototype and Infamous came out was the only sandbox game that understood a game should be a game first and a life simulator second. It's still fantastic fun to climb all the tall buildings, to launch an attack on a boss and to generally raise hell.
You can easily find it for under $20 shipped, and it's still a solid 3 star game.
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