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Posts Tagged ‘Criterion’

Back on the streets with Burnout Paradise

Friday, January 15th, 2010

I have to admit that I’ve had a fairly intense love/hate relationship with the whole Burnout franchise.  When times were good, Burnout was a sumptuous slice of gaming heaven.  When times were bad, Burnout was just another game I couldn’t be bothered playing.  It all started with the original Burnout on the PS2.  If I recall, I thought at the time that it was a steaming pile of… well, rubbish.  Burnout 2: Point of Impact though, changed everything.  In my mind it was perfect: the graphics were the best I’d seen in a racing game since Gran Turismo and the gameplay was spot-on.

I dabbled with Burnout 3: Takedown on the original Xbox and found it to be great fun, but the gaming experience didn’t feel as pure as its predecessor.  After that, I totally skipped the next instalments in the series, Burnout: Revenge and Burnout: Dominator (which was not even developed by Criterion).  You see, Burnout had got rid of the gameplay feature that gave its name; the burnout.  In Burnout 2: Point of impact, you could drain your boost meter without stopping which would cause the meter to refill, meaning that as long as you didn’t crash, you could chain as many boosts together as you wanted.  It melted your eyes.

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Posted in Gaming, opinion | No Comments »

A golden opportunity for Codemasters

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

I feel that Codemasters are missing out on a golden opportunity.  How so?  I’m referring to Trophy support and downloadable content; what I’m on about will all become clear very soon.

Codemasters are driving game veterans, having developed the Collin McRae Rally series over a number of years now.  They followed up their great series with the launch of DiRT on the PS3.  Then the subsequent development and launch of Race Driver: GRID- essentially the latest game in the TOCA Touring Car series, was a stroke of genius.  I’m only guessing here, but GRID surely reached a large audience.  I was a gamer that had played the TOCA Touring Car games and didn’t particularly like them, but GRID changed that. The visuals, the style, and the sublime handling.  Hey, I liked the handling! (some people would argue the handling was lumpy).

What has made things turn sour for PS3 users, is the fact that GRID won’t be patched to retrospectively support Trophies.  Everything’s been quiet on the GRID front for months, and then a mysterious downloadable content pack is available to purchase on the PlayStation Store.  It’s called the “8-ball pack“, and for £6.29 you get 8 cars.  Yup, for all that money, you just get that.  Let’s have a look what the competition have done…

Criterion Games, the developers of Burnout Paradise, have toiled away at and released Trophy support, and numerous downloadable content packs (all free!), and are only going to charge for their next pack because it adds a whole new island to the game.  It is probably even in the territory of an expansion pack.

This is why I don’t get this comment:

We’re currently not planning to retrospectively support PSN trophies – it’s not a trivial thing to add to a game.

Source.

This is where I believe that Codemasters have missed a golden opportunity.  The fans want Trophies, and the developers want a return on investment (ROI), so why don’t they patch the game for trophies, chuck a couple of cars in to sweeten the deal, then offer the pack up for purchase on the PlayStation Store?

You may think I’m making a big deal out of this, especially because there are many games out there that were released before Trophies came out and haven’t been patched such as Resistance: Fall of Man, The Orange Box, and many more.  But none of those games have just had a downloadable content pack released!  If they’re willing to develop new content packs, then why not Trophy support?

Sure, there will be a development team working on DiRT 2, but GRID is a franchise now in it’s own right and they could have kept interest in the game for far longer than they have done, just by following Criterion’s example.  But I digress.  I’ll conclude by admitting that the main reason I’m so upset about this is that GRID is one of my favourite games, and I’m just irritated by the attitude of the developers in this case.

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Posted in Gaming | 2 Comments »

Criterion Announces Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

Criterion Announces Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars- I’m going to have to look more into this before making a firm judgement on the ‘hover car’.  But right now?  Seems ridiculous.

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Posted in Asides, Gaming | No Comments »