Game Season

Lots of new games have been released that are of top quality, or at least look interesting to say the least, and I've had very little time to write about anything. But finally I have a few minutes and a desire to update with a bunch of games waiting on my shelf, maybe only for historical purposes so I can look back and see "oh that's what I thought of it"! I'll write shortly about a few games every now and then.

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
I have absolutely no idea why this and the one before it got anything even close to an 8/10 in reviews. The handling is terrible, you drive into walls constantly, there is absolutely no sense of speed and the levels are confusing. You only learn where to go after a few laps because of steep hills shadowed with tree branches or whatever and that's not how it's supposed to be. The graphics are screenshot-worthy at times but there are some effects that look horrible.

Burnout Paradise
Some don't like it but I think they're don't really understand how to play it. Burnout Paradise requires a different type of approach, you can't expect to retry a failed mission again for example, the idea is to create a more casual game, which is fine for me. You get new vehicles, want to upgrade your license, drive fast (that's what this game does amazingly well, you really feel like you're going at insane speeds), and all of this is done via casually doing a race/stunt run/etc. and if it fails then so what, drive to the next intersection and try another one. The game could be a bit clearer about which events you've completed already for this license but it's fine. The open world theme isn't that good for racing games because of taking too many wrong turns, etc. Midnight Club LA is quite a good game but then Need For Speed Undercover is not. None of these are great. They used to do them better back in the day (NFS Underground and NFS Most Wanted). Burnout Paradise is fun in a casual sort of way but you shouldn't have to tell your players how to play your game, outside of the basic game rules obviously, because currently I don't think everyone quite understands the beauty of this game.