also: not playing Burnout Paradise DLC. Thanks Sony. Thony.
Its a long weekend where I live and I decided to try out the recent DLC for Burnout Paradise. Well, after about 5 hours of patching Burnout, updating the PS3 firmware, updating my CC details on PSN, buying the DLC and the finding out that for some reason DLC is coded to the region of the game on a region free consoles where game patches are region free.
So after flushing $28 down the Sony toilet (unless I can borrow someone’s local copy), I popped in Boom Blox, a game I’ve had sitting around for 5 months into the Wii, a console I have not played at home in over a year. Boomblox is one awesome puzzle game.
The premise is the game is quite simple. You have a puzzle and rotate the camera around the puzzle to get a good angle, use the pointer to aim at where you’d like to hit, lock on, then through the miracle of waggle, throw the ball at the piece. You knock down some colours, avoid knocking others and otherwise play variations of this theme.
There’s not much else to say about it except its a helluva lot of fun.
Whether there’s enough of a game to justify this as a full price game is rather debatable. As it is, I can’t see how I could pad it out to a full review.
I have to say that Halo 3 is still a great MP game. Call of Duty 4 and WaW are very good experiences but H3′s Mythic pack has been a lot of fun. Sometime I get bitchslapped and other times, I do ok. But the game is rarely laggy for me (compared to WaW- which must have a sizable install base of its own). And I’m not even using the Good Connection option in the matchmaking options.
ODSTSTSTSTSTSTD might be an expansion pack but the fundamentals are so good I don’t think its an issue.
Its that time of the year of the year 2008 (stop that!). Gaming mags and websites are running their Games of the year awards. Controller1.com is only a small site and we don’t play everything under the sun but we’d like to see what you think.
This year was one where the heavy hitters were more evenly spaced out through the year. We’ll start by looking at the bigger games that came out in January, February and March 2008.
THE GOOD
Burnout Paradise (360 and PS3)
The only driving game that was so much fun that even non-racing fans could find enough to enjoy to justify a purchase. No retry button but the scale and depth of the game is amazing. You don’t have to be a hardcore racing fan to get a kick out of this game. From races, Takedowns, marked man, burning route (time trials in specific cars) and stunt modes, this game keeps on giving. Criterion and EA have been very good to fans of the series in so far as the many numerous FREE updates have all brought new content and challenges.
REVIEW
DEVIL MAY CRY 4 (360, PS3 and PC)
Some people really love the Devil May Cry series. Think about it, we wouldn’t have God of War without Devil May Cry. That said, now that Jaffe has the recipe, did we need DMC4? DMC fans liked this latest epic- the first game to have a long mandatory install before you started to play on PS3, yet the benefits over the 360 version were barely noticeable.
ARMY OF TWO (360, PS3)
EA Montreal’s coop-focused shooter was the butt(grab) of many jokes in the lead up to its release. It was famously retooled somewhat during a delayed release. The final product is slightly schizophrenic- It doesn’t know if it wasn’t to be a serious shooter with a political message or a braid dead action movie. It tries to be both and manages to still be fun (apart from the being dragged to cover mechanic when your health is low). This game actually sold quite well (on 360 at least) so a sequel “Army of Too” might turn up at some stage. Not essential but worth a play if you like coop. REVIEW
TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX VEGAS 2 (360, PC, PS3)
The first Vegas game was one of the best R6 games released since Ubisoft bought Red Storm. The sequel is one of the worst. It’s so fucking bad that I hope eeryone involved in its production si struck down with terminal bad breath. This game stinks. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE! Which plague, you might ask? Does it fucking matter? A Plague is a plague. It scored and sold very well, unlike the games in the “NOT SO GOOD” section where it belongs>.”
GRAND THEFT AUTO IV (360, PS3, PC)
So this was expected to be the biggest game of the year. It isn’t. Its a good game in its own right, maybe not as expansive and as much fun as San Andreas, but still great. It was very daring but at the same time, kept a lot of the stuff you hated about the old games, things that Crackdown and Saint’s Row managed to get right. Definitely the most overrated game of 2008 (a lot of people fell in love with the idea that this was a near perfect game when it came out but too many cracks appears all too quickly) but still at the least, a very good and even great game. You need to play GTA IV, just be aware its flaws aren’t always minor and easy to overlook.
LEGO INDIANA JONES
The Lego Star Wars releases show that you can make fun games for kids that adults will also respond well to. Lego Indy is perhaps a test to see how well the formula can survive with Jedi involved. Indiana Jones is a huge franchise in its own right and without a Next Gen version full of DMM and the like, this was the game that came out alongside (or near enough) the cinematic return of the Man with the Hat.
This game is highly playable on whatever system you have so go play it. REVIEW
And of course,
METAL GEAR SOLID 4 (PS3)
So this was meant to be the swansong of the series but its sold well enough for Konami to invoke the “Bitch” clause in Kojima’s contract. Its a great game. If you own a PS3 and don’t have this then go and get it, This is the reason you bought the damn thing. This game will also make you take up smoking. There’s so much attention to detail in the game that you can sometimes get overwhelmed with options. Here’s a hint, you don’t need 70% of the stuff you have at your disposal. REVIEW
BATTLEFIELD BAD COMPANY (360, PS3)
Not Battlefield Heroes, but a better version of Battlefield 2. It works phenomenally well on PS3 and 360 online. Oh and there’s a decent single player that’s a proper single player game and not just MP maps with bots. REVIEW
SID MEIER’S CIVILISATION REVOLUTION (DS, PS3, 360)
Our own Cam has been playing Civ games since he was in nappies. In fact he still is playing Civ games in nappies. Sid Meier on a console? Outrageous. But it worked. A review is apparently coming (better late than never).
THE NOT SO GOOD:
THE CLUB (PC, 360 and PS3)- Sega and Bizarre Creations attempt to merge the Kudos systen from PGR and a shooter went largely unnoticed. A pity as the demo was fun and I still intend to pick this up (cheaply) to blast through its single player mode
FRONTLINES: FUEL OF WAR. (PC and 360) THQ and KAOS Studios’ version of Battlefield (some of the Kaos guys were originally behind the popular Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat) was not bad, but after a couple of demos and a stillborn PS3 version, the game was just a victim of too many better shooters already on the market. When you’re up against UT3, CoD4, Halo 3, Quake Wars, etc, you need to do something better and with more charm than the competition.
TUROK (360, PS3)
Well, this series was a really big deal back in the N64 days but Turok is not what it was. Actually, it was crap back then, so maybe it is exactly what it was.
HAZE (PS3) Ubisoft
Another overhyped failure, this game was meant to be the PS3′s top draw shooter until Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 appeared. It wasn’t. If you can talk about Haze on a message board without LOL appearing within 30 seconds, and your NOT on the “Official Haze website” you’re having a good day.
THE BOURNE CONSPIRACY (360, PS3) RENTAL OF THE YEAR!
Well no Matt Damon, no Jason Bourne. What’s the point? You might as well mocap Richard Chamberlain.
ALONE IN THE DARK (PC, PS3, 360, Wii, PS2)
Atari and its last remaining internal studio try to scare the shit out of us. They certainly scared the shit out of people who bought this. “Oh my god, I’m an idiot for buying this.”
QUAKE WARS (PC, PS3, 360)
It sorta fizzled on PC late last year and any remaing embers doused on 360 and PS3. Both console versions are to be avoided, for different reasons. The main reason to avoid it is because its Quake Wars.
and in a special sealed section on its own.
THE NINTENDO WII
A trio of Nintendo releases headlines the Wii.
WiiFit: It may not be an 800 pound gorilla, but only because the balance board’s weight limit is 130kg. My mother, who doesn’t like videogames and rarely bought me games as gifts as a child wants a Wii Fit. She doesn’t want the Wii, just the WiiFit. We tried to tell her you couldn’t use the WiiFit without a Wii but she stopped listening at that stage. So she’s getting a Wiifit for Christmas without the required Wii. What the hell do I care?
Mario Kart Wii: Mario Kart was always a big franchise but for some reason the Wii version with its multitude of control schemes (somehow all less than optimal) has managed to outsell the sublime Super Mario Galaxy. Mario Kart on the DS is kinda the reason I hooked up with these bums to make podcasts back on angry-gamer.net. But I hate Mario Kart with a passion because of those fucking snakers. Yes you can’t do it apparently on the Wii, but hatred is a keeper.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: When I used to play wifi DS games with friends on planes, a DS SSB was what i was hanging out for as a really good MP game. But its on the Wii and its very good for the sort of game genre that you don’t get many options for on the Wii.
there’s also:
Boom Blox: Hey look, a third party Wii game. It did OK and is still selling decently (if not charting). Hey EA, make more Wii specific games designed fro the Wii.
Zak and Wiki: Puzzle game. Its a puzzle game. Its not the second coming of our lord and savior Mecha-Christ.
No More Heroes: Yes it was interesting to look at the character design. Then look at the backdrops and go driving around down. The combat was mashing buttons until you use the Wiimote for a finishing move. NEXT!
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360. Developed by Criterion. Published by EA.
Burnout, baby, Burnout. Burnout Paradise. As a lifelong conscientious objector to driving games, I am playing a driving game.
So Burnout is one of the first games whereby there’s no discernible difference between the PS3 and Xbox 360. In fact, BP is meant to be slightly better on PSTripple. I bought it on PS3 since its region free and EA’s 360 games aren’t region free. That and the fact the Sixaxis was gathering more dust than an Xbox 360 in Tokyo.
So Burnout Paradise is a driving game set in a sandbox. You can drive almost anywhere in Paradise City and there’s an event at most major intersections. You can have simple races against other cars. Marked Man races in which all the other cars are trying to run you off the road before you reach the finishing line, Road Rage where you have takedown a set number of enemy cars, Burning Route which is a time trial for specific cars and Stunt Event, where you have to string tricks together using jumps, hand-brake turns, boost and spins.
Simple. You choose what you want. And I’m shit at races, I’ve been concentrating more on the other modes to progress. This game has different classes of licenses (Class D and up) and as you progress to a new class of licence, the level of difficulty increases as does the number of events you need to win before you reach the next level. Of course, you can set your own races at any time with a well thought out online system (on PS3 since that’s what version I tested). Or it would if I had any friends with PS3′s and Burnout.
You also have occasion to ‘takedown’ other cars in order to add them to your collection, which is always fun. I found the game to be quite accessible for people like myself who aren’t big driving game fans (remember- one of the main reasons I loved Crackdown was because it was the only GTA game that you don’t need to win races in order to progress). I found the takedowns to be rather easy once you used the right car for the job, and races got easier later in the game, but stunt runs became more difficult for some reason. You can also set up big crashes, but these are more at the mercy of the traffic and where it happens to be at the time. There is no restart event button as there was on older Burnout games but I haven’t worried too much about it.
The graphics are superb, mostly running at 60fps (apart from some cutscenes where applied video filters make the game run at a still great 30fps. I also played the 360 demo and that looked and sounded just as good (but with custom soundtracks and XBox Live).The crashes look great (as they should)The sound is also excellent apart from two caveats- 1 half of the soundtrack is music from the first three games (ie crap techno) and DJ atomica is such an amazing bland Ryan Seacrest- clone.
So you have a bunch of Brits making the ultimate ode to American and Japanese cars. I couldn’t give a fuck about Gran Turismo Pay to Demo or Need for Speed or whatever- this is an awesome game.
C1 Rating: 2/3
UPDATE:
Recently, I revisited Burnout for a day, installing the recent patch introducing motorbikes. I like driving the cars in Burnout. The bikes, not so much.
