I want my Burnout 3
This post has nothing to do with code or security. Move along ;-)
One of my current favourite XBox games is Burnout 2: Point of Impact. It's not a new game -- I originally acquired it mid last year -- but I just started playing it again because I was getting sick of GTA: Vice City. And since Rob is in San Francisco for the weekend, it's my job to provide homework distraction services to Jenny and so I got her hooked trying to rack up 75+ million dollar crashes on the freeway.
The game is a whole lot of fun because (i) it's an arcade-style racer rather than a "simulation," so you can go fast all the time and not worry too much about it (PGR might be pretty but it's just too darn hard); and (ii) it has the coolest freeway pile-ups ever!
Anyway, we were brainstorming cool features to add to Burnout 3 (assuming there will be such a game), and I've thought of a few more just sitting here:
· Make it easier to crash things off cliffs / bridges / etc. There's nothing like watching a taxi fly hundreds of feet in the air into a ravine, but it's too hard to make busses fly
· Let cars fall into the water. There appear to be invisible boundaries that stop cars going into the water
· Have semi-trailers that actually separate. You can make trucks jack-knife, but they always stay in one piece. I also don't think I've ever seen a truck roll over
· Explosions! Yeah, why don't vehicles blow up? Especially those big petrol tankers...
· Maybe a bit gruesome, but if you're gonna give dollar amounts for the crash, why not add more statistics? (I'll leave it to your imagination to guess what they might be...)
· Bring back the "save-a-crash" mode from Burnout 1!
· Secret shortcuts. Arcade racers often have shortcuts like hidden side-streets or parkland tracks or whatnot that make the game more fun. As far as I can tell, there are no such shortcuts in Burnout 2
· Add explicit jumps. You can get "air" going over bumps in the road, etc. but it would be cool to have actual jumps in the game that you could use to gain more burnout points. Maybe you could completely jump over sections of track like S-bends or take massive shortcuts by jumping on / off an overpass
· Maybe they could add "stunts" to the game, too?
· Weapons! Whilst I'd never in a million years want Burnout to turn into Spy Hunter (ugh!), it would be cool to be able to pick up simple weapons and attack your opponents. Nothing too fancy that distracts from the racing aspect of the game; just some good clean heat-seeking missile fun
· Oooh, or maybe you could take the money you earn (or fail to spend on insurance!) and buy upgrades to your car over the Championship missions. Anybody remember that old stand-up arcarde with the four steering wheels where you could buy better tyres or nitro or whatever between races?
· XBox Live! support for multi-player. Or even just four players instead of the current two
Anyway, I would send this wish-list to Acclaim but they don't have a good "I love your game!" contact e-mail address. Instead I'll send a link to this post to their tech support alias and see if I ever hear back from them (although I expect it will go to /dev/null).
But if anybody reading this happens to know somebody who knows somebody who works for Acclaim, maybe you can pass it on? Thanks ;-)
It's quite a coincidence that just as I started to write this entry,
came on the CD player... perhaps subconsciously I knew it was the next track coming up on
, but I swear I thought of the title for this post before the track started playing... weird.
Update:
They should also add:
· Multiplayer crash mode that doesn't suck. Have a "co-operative mode" where two or more players crash at the same time (oooh yeah) or at least drop the restriction that all players have to use the same controller
· Don't make me click the "A" button through soooooo many screens between races / crashes. Or, if you must display so many screens, let me "fast forward" by clicking "A" before the text has finished being written