LTTP Bump!
I picked this up yesterday, played it for about 5 hours, got my C-license and found about half of all the collectables (SuperJumps, Billboards, and Smashes), and so far I've enjoyed it. I wasn't sure if I would because of how much they'd changed it, but change isn't always bad. I'm not getting rid of my Burnout Revenge 360 after playing this that's for sure, but this is a nice installment to the series too. I miss Crash Mode and the relentless traffic checking of Revenge, but open-world Takedown Mode, Marked Man, and Stunt Mode were all good. Racing is kinda meh.
One thing kind of disturbs me about Burnout Paradise though. It made me feel like the people in Crash, like I was watching car crash pornography. I mean, I played Burnout games before, but this was the first time I picked up a vaguely erotic vibe to it. The way the cars slowly crumple together in super slow-motion, parts slowly warping and melding together in full 1080p like some kind of perverse automotive mating ritual, before finally climaxing in an ejaculation of glass and metal. It's like they're expecting me to pull down my pants and start jacking it.
Between this and the self-proclaimed Gun-Porn of Black, with it's loving-crafted weapons, portrayed with more polygons than probably everything else on the screen at the same time, I've come to the conclusion that the people at Criterion are really fucked up sexually.
