What’s great about Paradise and Online play?

What is great about Paradise and Online play?

Sound effects:

I can’t say anything about these effects, well I can, the start up noise of a car as you begin the game is very irritating, and does belong to one of the cars, I can’t remember which one, [add to comments if you remember], but that start does grate, like Asian childrens squeaky shoes, good for finding the child, but irritating enough, that some passerby, stole your child shoes, by throwing said shoes in bin with said child, find your child now, parent? Not that I would do that?

Other than that, sound wise this game has it in spades, Raging Bull of sound effects, but still can’t find the bird noises. Are they the ‘coo’ of Pigeons, the ‘tweet’ of Starlings or the lonesome ‘cry’ of an Albatross?

It was said that some sounds of a car engine can’t be heard, when in First Person View ‘the bumper cam’/racing view, it could be because the engine is rear mounted so that sound does not get heard while in this view, while other cars have it front mounted so you can hear it’s mighty roar, and its race though the many gears, big trucks have many gears, but race cars, thought they went no higher than 7 maybe 8, gears? Nice sound effect though, even if not ‘right’ in the sense of realism, but I could be wrong?

Ambient sound effects throughout the game are great, the zip of a car passing by, the rubbing against something, like a rail, the ‘twonk’ as you hit another car and survive, etc. Crashing sound are ‘unreal’, a great thing, you know with added screams, monkeys at feeding time, the works as it were, great stuff.

To listen to the sound effects, you do need to turn your music sound down or off, but there is a lot of sound in this game, most ignored or not known about, as the usual player, is listening to their own tunes or the in-game ones, to match the sound of the car engines, that the ‘Paradise Space’ sound is covered over. But there is a lot there to find.

On the top Angus Warf Car Park is a good place, at the back, construction of the bridge, to the front, sounds of the city and cars driving below.

I know if I really wanted to take it seriously, I could slowly drive around ‘with the window open on my car’ music off, maybe even DJ Atomika, and find unique sound spaces within Paradise, but being that far into sound will bore most people, not sound guys mind, but they probably already did that, and listed what they found where, but to the casual gamer, do give it a try in your most favourite space, [and comment below on what you did hear] and if you find said ‘birdie’ noises, I need a street name, thank you…

Visuals:

I wrote what I thought about the overall look of Paradise, in a blog called ‘Its Big, I was angry…’, but just going by what the art guys did do for this game, it’s still amazing, even if Over ‘K’ooked in the Pizza oven from Hell, though that place does only exists in the minds of man, computer games and other media.

The buildings, roads, landscape, surfaces, you name it, it all had to be created by someone, and Criterion’s art team, did do a great job, it is a city, and it’s mostly interactive with game play, and still being able to see it from ‘Lovers Leap’ up in the Mountains is cool.

The Cars look great, and there are a minimum of 76 to choose from and do have a colour variation, which is a plus.

Handling:

This is the cars that you do drive, each have their own characteristics, road holding, or not, bouncy suspension, snaking tail ends, acceleration, braking, hand braking, each car has its own ‘feel’, and you do have to drive them all, to find one that works with your type of driving, and that works within the space that is Paradise, and what a race host creates.

And the game does reflect this, you win an event, and a car is roaming the map, awaiting for the player to take it down, for it to go to the Junk Yard in its smashed state, then you have to go to there, take it out, repair it, fill it with boost and drive it back, to the Yard, change its colour and drive it again.

In that space of time, you have given it a spin and got a slight feel for what it drives like, I like that idea. I just wish you had to do that for all your cars, take them down, even the ones you get for Billboards etc, true they are gifts for working the game, but I would like to see how the AI drives the car, and avoids being taken down. And keep a consistent game play element that has already established.

As a player, the car is the only tool within the game that is used throughout the game play experience. And they do their job really well, in Polls, and forum posts, everyone has a favourite car, and they are all different, except for the PCPD Special, this car is slowly becoming the car of choice for racing, no matter what colour it comes it, lol.

True, not the only fast car in the game, and I have beaten it with the Watson Roadster, and the Hawker Solo. This is a great car for Road Rule Times, but its back end does bounce about a lot, so I normally drive that for races in the in-car view so I don’t see that happening, very distracting, and no, it does not need to be fixed, it’s a cool touch, with some hard work behind it. But it seems to work harder than that Renault adverts, and ‘Shaking dat’ Ass’, maybe someone will Parody that in a YouTube video, lol.

Yes some cars, handle really bad, is that the right way of saying that, they over steer, under steer, boost really fast or not enough, hand brake straight, with the Uberschall, or to the left in most cases with other cars, we need a tracking garage to sort out that slight pull to the left, lol. Some wheel spin constantly, till they get going,  see very accelerator heavy I be, plus I do have my 360 settings for driving games, on high, maybe I should put it back to medium, as some of the later speed cars and some high speed stunt cars, do spin out rather well. Also hitting a jump and landing it in a race car or fast one, the front wheels do seem to lose it, I was told land it but don't touch your controller till after the landing, save you from a crashing end??

And that’s the thing, these cars are built for Paradise, true some remakes from old games, like the Roadster, Revenge Racer, and the Euro, the Rossolini LM Classic, (oh why the Rossolini, is that a reference to The Doctor numbered 46, great racer in all fields of motor sport when he has ago, but please there are other great riders/racers out there. The Moss mobile would have been nice for example, or the Setti, (SP?)'moves like stink mobile', true most of the Car names have a reference, to great racers or manufactures but a Bike racer, then again maybe there is a car racer, also named Rossi, lol).

In Paradise, you have to have loads of control and need them, all the buttons are in use, two different types of braking, drift brake, hand brake and hitting something is the additional third, a serious increase in game play mechanics, throw that in with navigation, with a worse than Tesco’s own, GPS, and game play goes through the roof, and not in a good way, it is like trying to learn to ride a bike again, after been reincarnated as a fish, yes a reference to Yatzee from Zero Punctuation, but from his review of another game.

So Paradise, is next Gen, and a fresh start, to the series, and having to learn a new control system, a new way to play, and a new way to look at what has gone before and where it may go too, and how people will respond, fresh blood to the Royal Blood, that was Elite.

The cars are like the games of old, and game play is also similar, you crash, race, and takedown, pretty much like the games of yore, but due to the new game and game play engine, there are differences, that most veterans of the game can pick up and play the game through in less than 40 hours or so, not including online play mind, do a  couple of 8 man races and find 4 friends online at different times and most of the 2 to 4 player challenges can be had and most of the achievements can be had for the ‘LSH’s’ too. And that’s where is seems to be for most old Skool players. None seemed to try and create races or imaginary (made up) events that could be done with just friends. It seems to end when it comes to online play.

Online Play:

Showtime can be done anywhere as long as it is not within a challenge or race event.

Everyone can start a Showtime event, all at the same time and at the same street/spot, and see who gets the highest score for that street, true they may all end up at different spots across the map and finish at different times, but while they wait, they can do dailies, Road Rules or do another Showtime, anywhere. You can have Showtime Hours, Challenge hours, Road Rule Hours, whatever as the room fills, or even when it is full, the host has to control the room, and people jumping in have to ask what is going on or listen to what the host wants to do, and the host must give time for someone to leave, so they don’t get feedback as quit early.

I jumped into a ranked race room last night and the host said they were doing challenges, are you a quitter? Harsh but I said I’ll stay and help out, and stayed until I was invited to go elsewhere, at least an hour or so, where I waited till a challenge was done then left. Also due to the coms silence, as I was in the room at number 7, and with a few jumpers, I lost sound with the host, but I always knew where he was, he was yellow after all, and I always did the challenges, even if the whole room took me down a dozen times each, as I waited for them to get their tick mark. Sadly the host and most of the room must have been offline as I could not send a message to the host to say Thank you for a good room, shame about the rape ‘age, lol. Urbansithlord was his name, and he did have good room going, and if anyone sees him or knows him, do point him in this blog direction, so he gets his thanks.

Road Rules can be done at the same time, you can race against each other, with-in this mode, Xandu and myself, were trying to beat, South Mountain Drive and Han’s Lane Road Rules, well I wasn’t but I joined it for the fun of it, and did improve my time and so did Xandu. And though you can create races along the same streets/roads, you can’t score a ‘real’ time, so you have to pretend you are racing, the above sample is a circuit, the same can be done with other roads.

And here comes the not so good bit, but still is good if you think Paradise and not any other Burnout game.

Online Racing:

Since this game has come out, I have tried to race in this game, from its sprint point to points within the off-line play to the Paradise Drives on-line and the races created by a Host of ranked to non-ranked rooms.

Have I done enough with this mode, no not really? But I do spend most of my time on-line, rather than off. I have created races, circuit, and point to point, raced other people variations and some are great, some are not, some just need tweaking to get right, but creating these routes are not easy to do the interface that is the race creator. It is not really that good, usable and with time better understood, but not really user friendly.

When I create a race for other people to do, I have certain criteria to follow.

Show them, the racers, the city, make routes that will show the super jumps, short cuts and billboards, and areas of interest.

Will most, if not all, of short cuts along the route be usable? The more ways people can go along a made route, the more replay it does have in the sense of discovery, the more fun it can be.

Can the route be a show off route, with stunt run elements? I do drive a lot of stunt cars in racing and the best way to get boost is to have stunt areas along the way. I like races along the South Bridge express way, just so I can flat spin the car or barrel roll it, in front of an audience of other racers, at the start or even better at the end of the race, and just get some more boost, plus look cool!

There are some very cool areas/roads within the map, a drifting corner, a jump, a cross section with nasty traffic, multiple routes along the same path etc. I like to build stuff along those sorts of lines. An example of these is the jump near Rock dam off South Mountain Drive near the Quarry or the jumps off at the dam, the train tracks and the underground bit of the I-88 plus many others I could point out.

Xandu has a race that starts at Lone ‘Ranger’ Ranch (lol) and ends at the Coast ‘is that Costner’ Guards, has check points that gets to out skirts of the city, then the racer is on their own finding a good route till a check point just before the Coast Guards. And I have found the short cut to get across it all with minimum of fuss (think above ground), and still looking for more each time I replay it.

I also like having jumps along the route not just for the above said speed boost, but for Vertical takedowns, not that it happens much due to the pack being spread about sometimes, well most of the time at the mo, but as people learn the city and the route created. Yes, remember to save them people, and you can replay most people routes, the last 10 or so are saved for reuse by any player that has played them. I don’t know about the quitters though? Though I hope so, they need all the help they can get.

Traffic, now on a new route, or with new people, the option to turn the traffic off, is a plus, it means people can study the route and get use to the corners without the traffic in the way. The problem with that is that corner now will not work as there is traffic in the way, when it’s turned on? I have an issue with traffic, but I would rather have it on now; then try and work out how the race will pan out, as well as what place is best to do a turn or which short cut is not too death defying!

Also if it is a good host, who will have built a lovely bunch of routes, from 1 to 5 routes, with 17 check points or less, including the start and finish. Once he has built them, he should go make a cuppa or not do anything for a few minutes, and in this time the other racers can look at the routes he has made, by hitting the Start button, and highlight View Race, here you get a view of the races set and can ask questions about where certain check points have been placed, to the host that should explain and talk about any over lapping ones.

The game forces you to learn the city, but as a host you can break it in gently to your fellow racers, by building good races that show off the town and its back alleys etc.

Host locking cars? Now I can’t say, it should not be allowed, but the routes should reflect type of car. I was in a room the other day, where the host locked the car on the Hot Rod, a car I have not unlocked so I got to use it in a wreaked state, and there were no Auto Repairs along the way of most of this host routes. Not that it did not do me any harm as I won over all, and he quit in the last race as I assume it was because I was winning, fix a race and someone may un-fix you by winning lol.

I also like building routes in areas people do know, like the demo area, and doing ‘Killer’ check points, where the racer has to handbrake at the check point and then come back the way they came, it can cause some high jinks, with head-ons, lol.

No, it is not Revenge or Burnout 3 Takedown, it’s not as simple as that sorry, you, the player, do have to work at it, and that is a problem (will explain below, but this requires a lot of thinking and remembering what people have said in the past couple of days since I wrote the Blogtanic, and if I forget something, comment it, please). The traffic can be a nightmare, the takedowns can be way off, and very easy most of the time, the short cuts don’t work well, and the check point flash is a bastard, and a lot of routes just don’t link together, at high speed!

People have said they have found the game boring, one of us ‘Aholic’s has it as a motto, but is boring the right word, I would agree that it’s look, seems very same ‘o’ across the map. But game play?

This game can be bought/rented and played straight from the get go or just after the song anyway, and finished very simply in a few days of average play, a week at the most, for single player, yes I still have not finished it yet, lol.

True to compete on-line you need a decent car or the host may lock them just for you so it’s fair, for everyone in a sense, by bringing you up to their level.

The fact that there is no replay option, must mean it is left out for a reason, and that reason is to get to know the map, not rack up wins or complete events, as said before, the game is the map. Know the map and you’re a winner.

Frozen Vapour, sorry to highlight your name here but you seem to be loving the on-line racing, and I think it’s due to you becoming familiar with the map and certain race areas and race route/events, and of course finding/unlocking a car you like. And that’s not really a lot of hard work was it?

Racing horses and cattle have blinkers, so the animal will stay moving in a straight line and keep moving forward until told otherwise or until they hit an obstruction, and Revenge and other circuit type racers are blinkered, open world type games have no such restriction, it’s there for all to see.

And some people’s minds have also become blinkered too, because it’s not Revenge 2, Takedown 2 or Point of Impact 2 or a mash up of everything ever made in a racing game 2.

And with that much information that is Paradise being thrown at the player all at the same time, it can be daunting. I know I was on sensory overload for the first few days I played it, but now, I can filter a lot of non essential information out, the same with the previous Burnout Games. I thought when I first played Burnout 3, there was way too much colour, lol, and to much yellow flashing stuff in Revenge. But colour aside, there is a lot to take in with Paradise even with some essential game play missing, like on-line Road Rage and Boost Start etc.

Was the GPS poor, because once you know the map, does it still need to be used, it does when looking for challenges, a player or the next check point, but word of mouth and memory is a minimum ingredient, that can go a long way. The host says we are going to do some Airfield challenges, and half the room are already racing there before he has finished the sentence, lol.

This game needs to have the brain switched on, and that is the problem. The other games in the Cannon did not. Most people played the game while under the influence, legal or not, they played Revenge/Takedown to unwind after a shyte day at work. I know I played my best games while so tired that as soon as I turned everything off, I fell asleep, and dreamed of racing. I have not dreamed about Paradise since it came out, except what routes, I might want to build in the future.

Paradise requires brain work, the others did at first, to be honest, but once certain stuff was learned, all that was left to do any work, was the eyes and the hands, and the mouth to swear when something went wrong. I think another few more weeks of ranked racing and I too will be able to switch off the brain, but until then I’m going to try and make this game work for me, and give Criterion as much grief as I get from playing this game, they wanted to get feedback, and I’ll give it.

I will also need a better map interface, so I can create better races of the circuit variety. I know Xandu and myself are trying to get a map together, that shows the check point lay out, and hopefully be used as a map creator outside of the game, so we can plan out better races, and just hope we can find the right places to place the check points or not as the case maybe.

I think that is all I’m going to write for now, I do have other stuff to say that is good and bad or needs more, but I would like to keep this blog positive and I hope the comments it has are also in the same vain.

I would like to write more about the work that went into building the game, the technological work in this game is astounding, from disk reading/streaming, instant joining and other stuff but maybe Criterion will do more of that, after they stop patting themselves on the back at developer meet ups, lol. Their baby has been born, and just got back from school with a bloody nose, time to sort the fix list out, and build a ladder to give Suffur a slap back. Not that I am significant, to be noticed as such.

I am calm, it's just the rest of the world is out of sync with me!

I think good on-line play comes down to good hosting, and having a good set of people willing to follow what the host wants to do, I am not a good host, but I can build decent routes, and can only get better at it, as I learn the map, but when in Xandu’s (and others) room and with the right people, Paradise works as long as you follow what Paradise has to offer.