MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

Evilbaby — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:54:43 GMT

OH....man. I was fearing that we were going to languish in the love frest of Burnout paradise, then you drop this idea of the "One Game Future". Well done sir! I can feel the battle of positive and negative furies forming! Drama Commence!

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

trip1ex — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:58:36 GMT

I prefer a more focused experience. IT's pretty time consuming to wander around and find your fun. Starts to feel too much like work. I know some like that, but I'm finding the whole 'explore the 3d city' thang is getting old and am a bit sad that more and more developers think they have to go that route.

I haven't played Endless Ocean, but for some reason (despite what I said above) that seems to look appealing because it seems like you can actually learn something and the environment isn't another 3d city. It also seems a bit easier to get into.

The fun in Burnout:Paradise in my eyes is the hardcore stuff that is tough to devote the time too these days.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

Marijn — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:33:43 GMT

Strange that you should mention The Club in this context, as it seems to be the polar opposite of what you're enjoying in Burnout Paradise. The Club, after all, is a score-attack game: the developers have designed it as such, and perfecting your scores is the only true "goal" in the game. In other words, it's the same game design as Space Invaders, and it doesn't get any more single-minded (or older) than that. "Die-hard, old-school gamers" are hardly going to wag their fingers at THAT!

In other words, it's not the abandonment of linear game progression that's the real issue here, but the proliferation of open worlds with a large number of individual goals. And while I think there will always be a place for more focused, linear games (for example, Bioshock, which wouldn't have worked as an OWG (SSA or otherwise)), I do think that we're going to see many more genres experimenting with a more open structure.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

Evilbaby — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:33:59 GMT

@Marijn

I think you have hit the nail on the head. i also think that the real impetus for this expansion into larget worlds is directly from the proliferation of online play. It makes more sense for an online community to appear in a world that is open then one that exhibits a single course of events in a predertimined order.

Specifically there are two games that REALLY need both the open world and an online component that have been missing for years. Yugioh and Pokemon.....where is my Battle City MMO? Where is my 3D pokemon? Seriously I need those games.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

Ginger Yellow — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:08:48 GMT

There's something to Totilo's argument, but I'd quibble with the specifics. In GTA I tended to push for the story, and enjoy the open world as a bonus. In San Andreas,however, it was big enough and detailed enough for me to really enjoy just soaking it in. Whenever I got stuck on the missions, I'd just spend an hour or so seeing the sights. I don't do that so much in Paradise, perhaps because there are so many "missions" available, but more I think because it's not an imitation of a real city. San Andreas was great for the "Look, it's the X building" factor, which just isn't there in Paradise. For instance, the motorway system in Paradise is great for the events, but feels artificial with its broken fences, ramps and shortage of slip roads. You're always conscious that a certain feature is there for you to do a certain thing. San Andreas's motorways felt like real ones, with proper "spaghetti junctions" and everything. It's just that little bit more immersive.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Burnout Paradise. Round 2--Fight!

N'Gai Croal — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:48:44 GMT

@Evilbaby: Like TNT, we know drama. And there should be plenty of it in Round 3. Stay tuned.

@trip1ex: I hear what you're saying about it being a drag to "find your fun" in Burnout Paradise. But in truth, there's fun everywhere you go in Paradise City. You can speed, dodge traffic, do crazy jumps, pull off tricks, smash through billboards and trigger massive pileups. And when you get tired of all that, just pull up to any intersection, spin your wheels by hitting the gas and the brakes simultaneously, and voila--you've got a specific event with a specific goal. From where I sit, it's an inspired approach to game design that many developers can learn from.

@Marijn: The point that I was trying to make with The Club was about the density of gameplay. One aspect of gameplay density is where a single space or a set number of spaces allow for multiple styles of play. Burnout Paradise provides us with a single world, but there are multiple ways to enjoy it. Halo 3 offers a nine campaign levels, but there are several ways to experience them, which I outlined above. And the same is true of The Club, which even allows you to create your own tournaments by making playlists of various event types, mixing and matching player characters, starting weapons and locations as you see fit.

GingerYellow: You're right about the artifice in the design of Paradise City. But it's designed to be experienced at high speeds. Any increase in verisimilitude would come at the expense of, well, fun. San Andreas is meant to be experienced at speeds ranging from a leisurely stroll to a moderately fast chase, so its developers could opt for more plausible urban planning. The equivalent of "seeing the sights" in Paradise City is redlining your speedometer, driving into oncoming traffic and looking for ways to get into and out of trouble. That's what I savor whenever I fire up the game.