played via remaster on Steam
Gonna be retiring this on my Class B License for the time being, if only cause I've had my fill atm and want to have another racing title on the side. Still about as good as I remembered! The only big negatives I've developed in this replay is the open world - not necessarily the idea or execution, but its double edge nature. While exploring Paradise City and finding all its little secrets and cool stunts/shortcuts is still enjoyable, it unfortunately obfuscates the career progression - instead of rising up thanks to tight finishes, style mastery, or hard evasion/ram tactics, it becomes a bit of an errand duty where the "progression" comes from simply having to do more tasks, some of which you've likely already finished, just to "feel" higher. I wouldn't exactly mind this too much, but it doesn't exactly put in a good drive of engaging with the systems or other cars if you only ever have the desire to change them on the rare mission that gives you trouble, or all the Burning Routes the game has littered about. Need For Speed Most Wanted 2005, while not necessarily an exact replica of the formula and structure, does a much better job at incentivizing all the challenges and goals to push further along. I didn't do much with the Big Surf Island content, nor all the other DLCs the Remaster has bundled in, so I'm not quite sure how those would affect the structure and loop.
Like I said, it's a double edge sword, but I do get the other side of the intention. NFSMW05 was about pushing further and further along for street cred and revenge, this one's just about cruising to deliciously mid-late 2000s pop/rock/occasional metal tunes as I drift and swerve around pedestrians, do barrel rolls and flat spins on ramps, and just cruise around Paradise City on my own leisure. Handling for each of the cars I dabbled with feel how they should, with Aggressive and Stunts being my go-tos for all manner of the occasion. The way each of the key areas are designated to each point of the compass also contributes to a general sense of where specific challenges and aesthetics are, to the point I didn't really bring up the map as often and went with my gut and flow. Despite its contentious nature for the playerbase back then and uncommonly now, Alex Ward, the creative director, did right for the direction considering he was really trying to push this up for the EA suits. Also he's a GOAT for recognizing the underrated sandbox thrill that is Mercenaries Playgrounds Of Destruction fr fr. I'm not sure how much the open world aspect of Burnout Paradise impacted the racing genre as a whole, since again this wasn't necessarily the first stab at it, but there's been drips of titles aiming to capture that summertime vibe and leisure, and considering I've seen people look upon this as fondly as the earlier Burnout titles - specifically 3 and revenge - its success is more than warranted.
...Also holy fucking shit I hate EA's stupid ass Not Origin software, it's actually aggravating the amount of times I threw myself getting this to work on PC. Stick with a PS4/Xbone/Switch release for this one.
Gonna be retiring this on my Class B License for the time being, if only cause I've had my fill atm and want to have another racing title on the side. Still about as good as I remembered! The only big negatives I've developed in this replay is the open world - not necessarily the idea or execution, but its double edge nature. While exploring Paradise City and finding all its little secrets and cool stunts/shortcuts is still enjoyable, it unfortunately obfuscates the career progression - instead of rising up thanks to tight finishes, style mastery, or hard evasion/ram tactics, it becomes a bit of an errand duty where the "progression" comes from simply having to do more tasks, some of which you've likely already finished, just to "feel" higher. I wouldn't exactly mind this too much, but it doesn't exactly put in a good drive of engaging with the systems or other cars if you only ever have the desire to change them on the rare mission that gives you trouble, or all the Burning Routes the game has littered about. Need For Speed Most Wanted 2005, while not necessarily an exact replica of the formula and structure, does a much better job at incentivizing all the challenges and goals to push further along. I didn't do much with the Big Surf Island content, nor all the other DLCs the Remaster has bundled in, so I'm not quite sure how those would affect the structure and loop.
Like I said, it's a double edge sword, but I do get the other side of the intention. NFSMW05 was about pushing further and further along for street cred and revenge, this one's just about cruising to deliciously mid-late 2000s pop/rock/occasional metal tunes as I drift and swerve around pedestrians, do barrel rolls and flat spins on ramps, and just cruise around Paradise City on my own leisure. Handling for each of the cars I dabbled with feel how they should, with Aggressive and Stunts being my go-tos for all manner of the occasion. The way each of the key areas are designated to each point of the compass also contributes to a general sense of where specific challenges and aesthetics are, to the point I didn't really bring up the map as often and went with my gut and flow. Despite its contentious nature for the playerbase back then and uncommonly now, Alex Ward, the creative director, did right for the direction considering he was really trying to push this up for the EA suits. Also he's a GOAT for recognizing the underrated sandbox thrill that is Mercenaries Playgrounds Of Destruction fr fr. I'm not sure how much the open world aspect of Burnout Paradise impacted the racing genre as a whole, since again this wasn't necessarily the first stab at it, but there's been drips of titles aiming to capture that summertime vibe and leisure, and considering I've seen people look upon this as fondly as the earlier Burnout titles - specifically 3 and revenge - its success is more than warranted.
...Also holy fucking shit I hate EA's stupid ass Not Origin software, it's actually aggravating the amount of times I threw myself getting this to work on PC. Stick with a PS4/Xbone/Switch release for this one.
2 Comments
@smaench It took PCGamingWiki as well as a couple stray Internet forum posts to figure out what to do to get past that, which is one of the most outlandish PC borks I've ever faced. Even as a PC convenience type of guy I came very close to giving up and just opt for my Xbone copy instead, until I somehow got lucky enough for all of it to work.
smaench
6 months ago