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Wednesday 6 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY #2
This game is truly exhiliarating. I just found a train track that leads to the biggest jump I have found so far. I get going about 200 plus miles per hour, zooming down this road with no obstacles, and then launch myself of a dirt jump about 50 feet high. I soar through the air, land, and then immediately ram into a parked car. This is what makes this game cool. You can do this jump as many times as you want. You can even try to go off it upside down. Considering I'll never have a car this cool, or the balls to drive one this fast, this is a pretty good alternative.
Time flies when you play this game. There are so many things to do, and so many streets and alleys to explore, that you can spend hours upon hours doing different things. There is no storyline, there are no characters, in fact there are no humans at all. Your car and all the other ones drive itself. There are no pedestrians, thank god, and there is no death. This is a very safe world to drive in, and that makes it more fun.
DESIGN
There are 5 different types of challenges you can activate by pulling up to a traffic light:
-Marked Man, where you try to reach a destination without your car getting wrecked by enemy drivers.
-Road Rage, where you try to wreck a certain amount of enemy drivers before a time limit expires.
-Race, where you try to beat enemy drivers to a location.
-Stunt Run, where you try to link jumps into combos and do barrel rolls in your vehicle.
-Burning Route, where you try to reach a destination before time expires.
Each challenge is fun to do, and there are certain cars that perform better in each type of challenge. A heavy car, for instance, is very useful in road rage challenges, where the other cars bounce off of you. These challenges are varied enough that if you get tired of one, you can play the other ones for a while.
The city of Paradise is elaborate. To complete this game, you must explore every inch of it. There are hidden treasures off the maps, essentially skate parks for cars, with jumps, ramps, and racetracks. Your reward for completing challenges is always a cooler, sleeker, faster, stronger car, which is always a good incentive.
One of the cool ideas behind the game was that the designers intended for you to learn the streets of paradise like you would your hometown. When you need to race to a certain point, there is no defined route. You can turn on whichever street you want, and if there is a shortcut that you know, you will smoke the computers to the finish. It is this knowledge of the city that translates the best to online play. When this game has been out for a while longer, avid fans will have their own shortcuts to every destination, and races will truly come down to the wire.
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