Burnout Paradise and Why It's Insanely Awesome

Burnout Paradise was released a little over a year ago at the standard price of $60. The game was more than solid, and having picked it up on release day I was excited to start playing after I spent hours and hours on the demo. There was a lot to do, dozens of events to partake in, cars to unlock, freeroaming, and of course online play.

Now after several updates and additions (more challenges online, new cars, and the addition of bikes, which were free by the way) the game is only $20 and can be picked up without even leaving your house by downloading it off the Playstation Network or Xbox Live Marketplace. Seriously?

Yup. Criterion has really done an amazing job keeping their fans coming back to drive around in Paradise City. There is even more new content coming out, including a whole other island. Yea, a whole new island. A new "Legendary Cars" pack is out today at the price of $8 and I can only assume the new island will cost money as well. But Criterion has done plenty for them to earn a few more bucks from me.

You might say, "Well I don't like racing games...why do you think I'd enjoy this?" Yes, this game is under the racing category, but it's nowhere close to any racing or driving simulator. This is an arcade smash-em-up-while-driving-really-fast game. If you don't like racing games, that doesn't mean you won't like Burnout Paradise. In fact, I can almost promise you'll enjoy it.

So for $20 you can pick up an extremely fun game with lots of content and fun. Playing with friends online while listening to your own music is some of the best fun I've had with an online game in a while.

Good job Criterion, and thank you.

-Mark

My Top 9 Games of 09

Here are the games that I am most excited for in 2009.

9. LA Noire

8. Infamous

7. Bioshock 2

6. Resident Evil 5

5. Heavy Rain

4. God of War 3

3. Killzone 2

2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

-Rob

Killzone 2 Demo Review

A demo was released today for Killzone 2 (available in Europe, but if you made a Europe account you were able to download it).

The demo is roughly 1200MB in size. The first thing I noticed when I started Killzone 2 was the menu system. Very cool the way they did things for navigating. You can only play through a small portion of the full game and there's no multiplayer component to test out. No complaints about that though, it is after all a demo.

After messing around with the settings to customize it the way I wanted, I started the campaign. Unfortunately you can only pick one difficulty setting. It starts with a cinematic where your transport vehicle is going down and you crash land near a beach. After navigating with your troops for a small distance, Helghast troops immediately come down around you and the action begins. The demo lasted roughly 20 minutes from start to finish. You make your way from the beach to an indoor facility, then back out and it is over.

In between are plenty of enemies to shoot and the action is plentiful, but there is only one complaint regarding the combat. The aiming seems like it'll take some time to get used to, nothing major, but you might be missing enemies when you first start playing.

I was playing Killzone 2 in 720p and it was probably the best looking console game I have ever seen. Animations, textures, setting, lighting...all looks amazing. Blasting off your rifle and seeing the bullets impact metal is sweet. The bullets hit and seem to turn red hot then dissipate. Ragdoll is present with plenty of blood. Enemies react pretty realistically to getting shot. Overall, this game looks incredible.

Speaking of the Helghast, they are actually really smart in terms of combat. They take cover, try and flank you, and if you think they'll pop out one spot, they might show up where you're not expecting them. The only difficulty was the second out of four levels and I was getting hit pretty good.

Overall, Killzone 2 looks like it's going to be a very intense, graphically superior, fun, and fast paced shooter considering what is being offered. Highly recommended.

Killzone 2 Preview/Impressions

If you own a Playstation 3, I'm sure you have heard about Killzone 2. It drops on February 27, and man does it look sweet.

Apparently the story continues from the first one and more notably the Killzone that was released on PSP. Having only played a small amount of the PS2 version, I was somewhat worried that I might not be able to follow the story, but having looked around it seems it's not too much of a continuation and will be easy to follow for newcomers.

The recurring theme with next-gen shooters have been short stories. Having an 8-10 hour campaign seems to be the norm, and Killzone 2 does not stray from this trend. Although I always prefer content over length and have heard the story is great.

The multiplayer portion features a class system, which is another trend with shooters lately. The basic principle remains, level up and earn better equipment. There is really one game type to join, but objectives change as you complete a round. Sounds sweet, and you can even put bots in and play offline if none of your friends are around.

After watching several videos, I must say this game looks amazing. I always prefer gameplay over graphics, but Killzone 2 looks like it delivers on both fronts. The CGI we saw at E3 years back was really not that much of a stretch and this game looks absolutely beautiful.

A European demo is dropping tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken. I will probably make a European account just to get it and give it a shot, and hopefully have some impressions up.

Image copyright of IGN.com

Resident Evil 5 Demo Impressions (Ps3)

There are only 2 stages to choose from when the demo starts off. Both of these levels were playable at E3 but weren't available till now. The first is called public assembly. This level begins in a a village and after a cut scene the "zombies" begin to break through the house that Chris and Sheva are currently in. Right off the bat it the controls were exactly like RE4 (for better or worse). The aiming was a little too slow so I had to go into the control options to make switching between enemies a little faster.

It seems a little hectic especially when you have a limited amount of ammo while "zombies" and that executioner guy are after you. You are pretty much waiting for your helicopter ride for a rescue but until then you are screwed. I found myself running around in circles picking up ammo and picking off a couple of enemies until help had arrived. I felt like I needed a machine gun or something so I could get rid of all the enemies (I guess thats not the point).

After a few minutes the chopper arrives, after a quick cut scene the first level is over.

Shanty town

I'm finding the game to be very linear, not that its a bad thing, but I kinda wanted more choices. Chris and Sheva must investigate a chopper crash after some weird flying creatures attacked the pilot. This sorta thing happened in RE 4 but IMO they shouldn't have put creatures like that back in this game. Anyway, there are more instances to boost Shiva up on rooftops and other areas to add to the co-op feel. Speaking of Shiva, the A.I. seems very competent and does a great job at healing me, picking up items in the environment, taking out enemies that I'm not aiming at and saving my ass when I need it.

Another part that we have seen in demo videos is when Chris throws Sheva across one rooftop while your suppose to snipe enemies to keep her safe. Afterwards she unlocks the door and helps you kill the rest of the enemies. When you pick up all the items and head for the exit, a maniac with a chainsaw starts heading in your direction. Not only that but you have more "zombies" do deal with. They definitely need to add more ammo whether its with the enemy kills or more in the environment because I kept running around scrounging for it. I eventually killed the chainsaw guy by using the exploding barrels, my handgun and my sniper rifle. After that you pick up the gate key from the fallen chainsaw guy and you head for the exit.

Another thing that they added was the real time inventory system. Instead of having to pause the game and go into inventory, you can do it on the spot. It seems harder because there isn't really a lot of time do switch guns or heal (with all the enemies around) unless you run. It was a short demo, some things I liked and some things were meh. This is obviously a demo so I won't say anymore about it other than the controls take some getting used to (some people won't like it at all) and I want to try the co-op.

-Rob

Introductions

Who are we?..... Who'z you? (sorry inside joke)

My name is Rob and I am a gamer. Ever since I was a little kid, video games have intrigued me. I started reading EGM when I was 10 (I am 20 now), until the magazine was eventually shut down early this year :( I keep up on all the video game news, previews, reviews from a number of sites to get the whole picture and not just one side. I like to think I'm a well rounded gamer and try to play everything from RPGs to shooters.

As for my partner in crime....

Mark is my co-writer of this blog and friend for many years, he is also a gamer. We both go to college and are busy as hell. We try to get as much gaming in as possible but sometimes we get owned by school. We are also apart of a video game clan that has been together for close to 5 years now. We are first and foremost a Socom clan but we also play many different kinds of games.

The purpose of this blog is to show an unbiased view on games and share our opinions with the gaming public. We obviously won't be able to get hands on time with any games that aren't out yet but we will try to talk a little bit about the development of these titles as time goes on. This blog won't be all about video games though, here are some examples of what we will post.

Game Reviews
Game and Demo Opinions/Previews
Popular News Stories
Drunk Talk

If you wanna suggest anything to make our blog better than feel free to e-mail us. We will have a ton of stuff to share with you guys so check back with us.

-Rob

Welcome to Legendary News

Hello and welcome to our first of many entries to come. We will have mostly gaming news/reviews/opinions up here, but also will touch on popular news stories as well.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us:

legendarynewsblog@gmail.com

Stay tuned.