Be Excellent To Each Other

For fuck's sake. Another game that seems to be worthy of attention. Since the awesome Burnout Paradise, Criterion have been working on a Need For Speed game. It looks good. It's out in... November like everything else. November the 19th in fact.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxnPH1PX ... _embedded#!

Video is worth watching in HD.

Ooh. I was just thinking the other day I'd barely used my outrageous wheel stand due to a lack of new driving games in my life.

It looks really lovely. I think it's basically the cops and robbers mechanic - you can be a cop in a police Lambo, or a crook in a Veyron, etc. Which one was that good NFS with cops in? Or do they all have cops? It was a few games ago, but I enjoyed it anyway. But yeah, Criterion = almost certain to be very fun indeed.

Why do they need to saddle it with the Need For Speed branding? I have Need For Speed Undercover and want to stab the developers in the eyes as the endless cut scenes are so annoying.

That video looks very much like a Burnout game.

Unsurprisingly.

That looks bloody awesome. Thank god they've given Black Box the heave ho for once.

Of course I shall be getting this.

Trousers - Need For Speed Most Wanted was the great game with the cops in, everything since hasnt been as good. Carbon was passable, but took nowhere near as long to complete, but had some additional features such as wingman and in-game footage of your opponents face either grimacing or laughing at you.

The vid looks nice, be interesting to see what score PC Zone give it...... oh shit.

Looks like a not-as-good-version of Spilt/Second with less happening on the track. (from the car designs at least). Seems less busy and crowded than Burnout Paradise

But I was a massive wrongo face about Burnout Paradise - so I'm giving Criterion the benefit of the doubt. They make good games they do.

That's the one! It was really, really good. It came out of nowhere and then the series returned to being shite.

Hmm, a couple of people are mentioning NFS Most Wanted, and I agree, it was pretty good.

But what about the PS2 version of NFS Hot Pursuit 2 ? (the Xbox, Gamecube & PC versions were done by a different developer, had poorer handling, and weren't nearly as good as the PS2 version).

That was easily my favourite NFS title on last gen consoles (followed by "Most Wanted").

Most Wanted was released on the 360 also, so can technically be called 'this-gen'.

edit: I didn't play Hot Pursuit 2!

True, and I didn't mean to imply we were only talking about last-gen titles.

But Carbon (ughhh....) has also been mentioned and I'm guessing the current-gen version of Most Wanted isn't much different from the last-gen version (apart from looking prettier of course...).

Based on that assumption, the PS2 version of Hot Pursuit 2 is still easily my fave game in this series.

"edit: I didn't play Hot Pursuit 2!"

A lot of people haven't as I think it became fairly rare not too long after release.

Here's a gameplay vid of the PS2 version : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHUu2PjE ... re=related

It has 2 completely seperate (and lengthy) career modes. One based around pure racing (as shown in the vid), and the other based around being the cop.

Kept me entertained for months.....

Most Wanted is indeed excellent. The first Underground was ok on the Xbox/PS2 also. I wouldn't touch any of the later ones with a barge pole, mind.

Oh yeah!

All it really was was NFSU 2 with police in. So it hardly came out of nowhere considering Hot Pursuit came out about eight years prior.

Eight years is a substantial amount of time when you bring a game out every year...

Plus the NFSU games were shit, and Most Wanted wasn't.

One of my pet peeves with gaming is the idea that bigger = better. The video makes it look quite, sparse. And admittedly, I'm typically not a fan of open world games, preferring the structure and craft of a linear one*, but Burnout Paradises world was wonderful, primarily for the density of ideas.

I'm suspicious over whether it will really have 4x the content, rather than 4x the size. I feel it's something that the marketing people force over the game designers.

* Mirror's Edge > Assassin's Creed for example

This is a world created by Criterion. It'll be crammed with fun stuff. The video is taken from the "desert highway" bit of the map, which by its nature, is sparse.

edit: There aren't many gameplay videos out at the moment, but so far I've seen that desert section, a forest section and a snowy mountain section. I imagine there'll be a town/city as well if it's four times the size of Paradise. I was still finding secret routes in Paradise City over a year after buying it! I really don't think Criterion are going to cop out on the amount of stuff in the game world and I'd be seriously disappointed if they did. Let's face it, the only reason we're bothered is because it's being made by them, so it's in their interest not to fuck it up.

If I wanted to memorize hundreds of secret routes, I'd play a Metroidvania, not a driving game. The open world aspects of Midnight Club or Burny Pee never fully clicked for me.

It's just the same as any other racing game, only the tracks are intertwined. Anybody who isn't a spastic can familiarise themselves with a gaming world within a few hours of play, and know it by the back of their hand after a few more. You don't have to memorise every short cut, that'd be stupid.

Same here, although it seems that some people learn their way round open world games much quicker than I do.

Do you get lost in real life often?

I find that I pick up land marks/memorable places in open world games really quickly. Most of the time. Some games I really just can't find my way around. But I think it might be to do with how much you're into a particular game. Burny P, I know very well, but I loved it. Ass Creed 2 I constantly had to refer to the map because I wasn't particularly interested in remembering where stuff was in relation to everything else.

No, for whatever reason it's just in games. There's a wealth of detail you get in real life that's just not there in a game. Of course I recognise some bits but then others can just all look a bit samey.

I'm hopeless at them too. It doesn't help that I dip in and out of games though. My brother's had my copy of Burnout Paradise for months now - by the time I get it back I won't have a clue where anything is in it any more.

New trailer: Kinda manages to make it look a bit boring, what with the samey blandness of the landscape (people criticised the desert bit before and I defended it under the assumption that it was just a dull bit of the map - either this is another dull bit or I'm running out of ways to defend it) and the fairly dull takedown stuff rather than intense Burnout style paint-swapping. Hoping it's just a boring map area/rubbish person playing it. I mean, it is Criterion. *crosses fingers more*


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEtFsnyu ... r_embedded

HD available if you click through.

Might be Criterion, but seeing as its all been going to shit since 2005, I'll be waiting for other people to waste their £


See C&C3 Fantastic 2007

C&C4 Shite 2010

EA Games, its in the toilet.

What Mr Cure said. Criterion: ooh. Need for Speed: urgh.

It looks to me Burnout Paradise with a need for speed skin on it, so should be good.
I don;t think I'll get it on release though which is 19th November, I think I will still be wondering around New Vegas

That and Fable 3 for me.

It's on my list

http://bit.ly/azbWCB

Don't play Alan Wake! Jesus Christ dodge that bullet.

Also Halo Wars. It's like C&C, but with every new idea they ever had stripped away.

I've never played any of the silent hill games so I'm thinking this is close enough to a horror adventure game?

I played the first stage & enjoyed it - wished it had a save option to save mid game though, you have to complete the stage before you can save it.

I don't think I'm wrong in saying that Dead Space is the survival horror game of this generation.

RE5 was good, but it wasn't really that "horror-y".

Dead Space is pure awesome, and well worth whatever they're charging for it now.

I liked Alan Wake, but nobody else did.

I'm going to play Dead Space again. It was a truly fantastic game.

I can still remember how it felt to go outside for the first time, and the awesomeness of the bridge.

And how they managed to keep it tense and a struggle without resorting to Resident Evil control limitations or turning it into a twitchy FPS-type game. They got it spot-on.

Alan Wake would've been good if it came out when they said it would come out... and if it wasn't absolute repetitive shite.

Did you watch any of the narrated graphic novel thingys that they released every other month before it was released? They were an excellent lead up to the start of the game.

I guess it'll be 60FPS if it's Criterion, which will limit the detail/complexity levels of the environments a bit.

Can't remember the last time I liked a NFS game (probably the very first one come to think about it......) but Criterion are generally dependable, and I'm not one of the folks who's overly misty-eyed about how good Burnout 1 and 2 were compared to the later ones (i.e. they weren't that much better).

Only 30FPS it would appear, but apparently they've managed some kind of super-smoothing smoothery trickery that makes it feel more like 60FPS.

Deffo a release day purchase for me, Criterion games are awesome and I've loved every single Burnout game in the series.

The dude himself says 'It's Burnout'.

Simultaneous release on all platforms by the looks of it so the PC version for me. (Which will hopefully support 60FPS if the hardware can manage it.)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010- ... t-hands-on

It's on my buy list, not sure about release day unless any good offers going.

Demo is available now! I forgot to download it haven't had a chance to play it yet - anyone had a bash?

Seemed a bit stiff after recently playing pure and split/second. I was getting used to it towards the end of my pursuit and I like the premise, I think it's a rental for me.

Cheeky fucking cunts, you have to be a gold member just to download the fucking demo.

Oh well, I'll be buying it anyway, but even so, cheeky cunts.

PC purchase for me, that'll learn 'em! Lolz roffle gz ty bb etc.

It'll be available on silver in a few days. You get a go earlier if you have a golden winky though, that's one of their selling points.

It's a scandal, I shall write to my MP.