Top Games List - Burnout Legends

I thought I better get going on the first game nn my list before I completely forgot about it and wrote about something else.

I was a bit of a late comer to the whole Burnout party. I never played the first three games on PS2 which is strange because Ridge Racer 4 is one of my favourite racing games and I'm a huge fan of the arcade style. I picked up Burnout Legends on the PSP fairly early after it came out as during that time there was a distinct lack of great games on the PSP. I played it to death and I truly believe that it's one of the contributing factors in me only getting a 2:2 at university. This was also during the period where I was travelling to Brighton, London or Milton Keynes to see Jordan every week so it helped me through a lot of long train and coach journeys.

My only gripe with the game was the rather horrendous load times. When you were playing crash mode and had to restart the level every 30 seconds or so the 15 second load times really got in the way.

Once Christmas is over and I have some free cash I'll definitely be picking up Burnout Paradise on the 360.

Favourite games

Today at work I was listening to the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children soundtrack. Advent Children is a CGI movie sequel to Final Fantasy VII - one of the most loved video games ever made. This got me thinking about FFVII and then about all of the other games that I have loved over the years which gave me the idea of doing a top 10. After thinking about what would make my top 10 I ended up with a mental list of about 15 or 20 and could not for the life of me decide what would make the list and what wouldn't.

So I decided it would be more fun to write a series of posts over the next few weeks in which I would name one game on the list and describe why it's there. The list will be in alphabetical order (or in no order at all) so as not to show any favouritism.

I must stress that this is just my own oppinion and I will inevitably leave off many amazing games due to me not playing them or just thinking they aren't very good. Over the years I have owned a fair few consoles and a pretty decent gaming PC so the list will cover most formats. For your information, this is what I've owned...

ZX Spectrum, NES, Master System, Mega Drive, MegaCD, 32X, SNES, Sega Saturn, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Game Boy, DS, PSP, Pocketstation (ahem) and XBox 360.

I have only recently acquired the XBox 360 so don't expect to see many new games on the list and I haven't really played the N64 since Jordan told me she had one a couple of years ago.

I hope you all enjoy my trip down memory lane and please give your oppinions on my choices!

My early Christmas present

Yet again, I apologise for the complete radio silence on this blog over the last month.  I'm not sure why I haven't posted as there have been several important events that have occurred over the last month which I have been quite interested in such as the new Cure album, The Cure playing the O2, the U.S. presidential election and the wonderful Dead Set.

One other thing to happen to me this month is my (almost) free acquisition of an XBox 360. I have a friend who earns a fair amount of money. He is also quite impatient. His second XBox 360 started showing the infamous red ring of death and was therefore useless. I assured him that he could get it repaired and that I would even sort it all out for him and send it off myself. He didn't want to wait that long and the next weekend he went out and bought himself a brand new premium model. He then donated the broken console to me to send off to be repaired.

I bought some packing paper and bubble wrap (this is the almost part of the previous paragraph - cost = £6.00) and sent it off to the Microsoft repair centre in Frankfurt. It has only been a week and I have already been told via Microsoft's support site that they have sent out my new XBox. I should have it arrive some time next week.

Now the last time I wrote a post about video games was back in April. I was annoyed at not being able to play Grand Theft Auto IV and I mentioned I was very much a PlayStation fan. It's not due to any mindless fanboyism, it's just because I have had Playstations since 1998 and most of my favourite franchises are Sony exclusives (WipeOut, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid). I do not, however, have a spare £299 + games to spare on buying a PlayStation 3 so a free XBox will make a pretty good stand in since other than the franchises I have mentioned, most games are cross platform or indeed Microsoft exclusives. 

I am still faced with the problem of disliking the controller and of course having to quickly translate A, B, X and Y into X, Triangle, Circle and Square. I'm sure after playing GTA for a few hours I will have worked it out but I still doubt I will ever love a controller more than the Dual Shock.

Another problem I am facing is the fact that I'm not a huge fan of first person shooters. OK, this may sound strange coming from someone that often cites Half Life 2 as one of his favourite games but that's different... that's Half Life 2. I am looking forward to Bioshock and maybe one of the new Call of Dutys but I couldn't care less about Halo 3 or 90% of the other FPSs that clutter up the XBox game catalogue. I am also not fussed about XBox live. I don't particularly want to pay £30 a year to be called a 'gay' or a 'pussy' by a fifteen year old American kid because I don't play the game 19 hours a day. Online gaming is really something that has passed me by.

So there we are. I am a PlayStation fan forced to go over to the dark side. When I bought my iMac back in April 2007 I thought I was rid of Microsoft but they have a funny way of getting themselves back into your life. Lets just hope that they've sorted out their god awful quality control and my shiny new box won't die a horrible death lit by three red lights in a few months time.

I shall report back once I've had a few days of play with it and I can say for sure whether I feel cheap and dirty from cheating on Lady Playstation with her most bitter of rivals or whether I will be starting divorce proceedings.

Games

So by the time I finish writing this post, Grad Theft Auto IV will be on sale. This is probably the first time that I have been genuinely jealous of PS3/XBox 360 owners. 

I have never really been one for putting the time and effort into games to complete them - most of the time I play it until I get stuck and then leave it for months with the optimistic idea that I will come back to it. The only games I have completed in the past few years would be New Super Mario Bros (DS), Star Fox Command (DS) and Half Life 2 (PC). Then why am I annoyed about not being able to play GTAIV? Because you don't need to finish a GTA to still enjoy it. Admittedly, the reason I didn't finish San Andreas was because my disk wouldn't load past half way through the last mission but I still had hours of fun flying the planes and '9/11-ing it' (tasteful I know).

This, it would seem, would put me firmly in the newly coined casual gamer category that Nintendo has so successfully captured - but I'm not so sure. I enjoy my DS, I really loved Zelda on it (that one I put down and just never picked it up again. I'm sure I'll find the time on one of my many long haul flights though), and I often lust after the idea of playing Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy. The only problem I have found with Nintendo consoles post SNES is that the third party games tend to be really really awful. Anything made by Miyamoto is going to amazing, that's obvious, but what the hell is all this Catz, Hamsterz and bloody Pippa Funnell?! Girls want well designed games too.

So this leaves me with only one option. Buy a Wii for the less challenging games that you can pick up for an hour here and there and fork out a whole £300 for a PS3 for the odd big game that comes out. I know, I know, most people would recommend buying a 360 as they are cheaper and there are more games but to those people I would say 'please go away and die'. Not only is the XBox noisy, unreliable and really, really ugly it also has possibly the worst controller ever created. Any controller that makes me... ME unable to play Street Fighter II is not worth using. I don't care if it's expensive or has no games, give me a Playstation 3 any day. Plus, I am already crying inside about not being able to play Wipeout HD and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. 

I really am a Sony Fanboy at heart.