Is it really Paradise

so at first I was disappointed.. woke up at my normal time for work, (6am) and turned on the 360, into the market place and what no paradise demo.. that sucked... was looking forward to it being all ready to go when I got home.. not a good start..

so on returning from work around 7ish first thing was onto the 360 and back to the market place.. and yay it was not there.. although I did know it would be as I had been on here during the day to see if anyone had posted anything about it.. and Zom had already confirmed it was available.. and Suf had given me a call in the morning to give his views about it after his inital go.. and from that conversation it started to make me worry that it wouldn't be that entertaining..

so I kick off the download and sit waiting.. and waiting.. and waiting.. and waiting.. in fact managed to watch the whole of rush hour 3 while waiting.. and yes I only have a 2Mb connection but it was only a 800MB download.. and they normally only take 20min to dl.. guess everyone was downloading it..

so it gets to just before 9 and I'm already jealous as about 80% of my friends that are online are playing the demo.. but finally it finishes and the fire it straight up.. go through DJ Atomica's speil.. get my licence.. get the car.. and get going.. after a couple of mins driving I'm still working on the feel of the car and how to drive/drift/spin the car... so far not that impressed with the handling.. but was very impressed with the graphics and the way the traffic reacts to you when racing down oncoming..

then the invite from Suf comes.. and I immediately accept.. and uh-oh.. I get a screen with a white back ground saying connecting to EA servers.. and it just sits there.. and sits there.. and sits.. there.. so what to do.. I go back to the dashboard and reload.. get another invite and phew this time I'm in the room.. although not sure what I am supposed to be doing..

so we drive around and try the challenges and I am now getting the hang of it.. starting to work on the drifting and getting better and better oncoming distances.. but still not going everywhere on the map..

so after about 2 hours of game play I think I have been everywhere on the demo map and the only thing is it seems very small.. doesnt feel like you can get up to full speed for too long.. but did find some nice sets of jumps and even managed a double barrel roll on the train tracks (obligortory 'Rolling Stock' call out provided by Zombie).. wish I knew how I did it so I could do it again..

final thoughts on the demo.. its too small.. thoughts on the game itself.. starting to enjoy it.. looking forward to the full game and different cars.. started to get the drifting and handling and have now reverted back to my burnout 3 style of drifting, tap the break, get the slide going and powering through.. looking forward to the online game play and new events.. haven't tried the 'offline' events yet as I only played online yesterday.. maybe later tonite..

its not burnout as we know it today.. but it is definitely burnout.. the defining moment where I realise this was when the camera ended up inside my car before falling through a roof into nowhere... oh and I liked that you can actually jump into the sea.. lol...