Burning the Legends...

I have just got BURNOUT LEGENDS for PSP. Even I am impressed. I have just started the game with really pathetic cars but already the speed is mesmerizing.

As far as I know, every site has given this game a high rating which says a lot. However, until I got the game, I had my doubts. I mean, this is by the same people who gave us SCORTCHED PLANET & SUB CULTURE. Now, anyone who has played these games knows that they were hardly amazing fun. Actually they were not much fun for that matter. SUB CULTURE had pretty graphics for the time but the game play was boring.

Yet these guys have scored big with the BURNOUT series. Heck, one of the guys I was hanging out with at the PSP midnight launch was a big fan of the series who claimed to have played each game in the series. No small feat let me assure you. Infact before the launch of BURNOUT LEGENDS, there were already quite a few racing games on PSP including the uber WIPEOUT PURE. So, exactly what is it that makes it such a success?

I cannot say for sure but say I shall.  For one thing BURNOUT series started with the concept of racing at stupidly fast speed where ramming your car into others is rewarded. That itself is a new idea and totally contradictory of what a normal conventional racing game would subscribe to. Yeah yeah, DESTRUCTION DERBY was infact the first game and I do wonder if it had anything to do in the development of BURNOUT. However, its quite clear BURNOUT series is immensely more playable than the DD series & does it much more successfully.

I do think, in order to score success in this competitive gaming world, a product has to have new ideas and I donot mean one single idea, I mean a collection of small new ideas. Sure you can have one big idea which is totally new but how often does that happen? Small improvements generally yield better average results, no?

I still have to play quite a bit of the game and I cannot wait to have another go. I shall note few more things done right in the game and do another post on the game. It deserves it!