Skate / Burnout Paradise
I played the demo of Skate, the game I didn’t like the first time I glanced at it. My experience went something like this:
- Start game. Do I want to do a tutorial? Sure, sounds good.
- Learn controls. Hey! This actually seems kinda logical.
- Randomly fumble my way through the tutorial stages. The tutorial dude, who from the audio quality appears to be calling me on his cell phone from somewhere on a small island in the Pacific, bids me to perform ‘ollies’ and other bizarrely-named moves I cannot remember. I flail around like a madman. I have no clue why tutorial dude accepts certain moves and not others. His comments are repetitive and make no sense to me. (”Keep that pressed just a bit longer” - dude I hit the ground.)
- I somehow get through this Kafkaesque ordeal to get to the final stage of the tutorial. I have to do 3 precise moves in fifteen seconds. Reading the list of moves takes me about 5 seconds. Remembering what they are, let alone planning how to execute them in the given space and time, then practicing until I get it right, might take, I dunno, more like fifteen minutes.
- After failing twice, I decide I just want to play the demo and free-form around a bit and bring up the main menu.
- “Retry” / “Quit Skate”. What?
- Quit Skate.
- At least a minute of non-skippable video sequence and marketing barf. Are you kidding me? I want my Xbox back!
- I now hate everyone even vaguely associated with this godawful piece of crap (sorry Mark).
The Burnout Paradise demo didn’t go much better. After driving around for 5 to 10 minutes, looking for fun, I realized I had better things to do with my life. Honestly, I don’t get it. Was there a bug in my demo or why were the races and stunts missing? Woo-hoo, drive around and go to gas stations and repair shops. I can do that in real life.
(Editors of game magazines: Contact me for game reviews. I am way more efficient than other reviewers. You won’t regret it.)
Do a rant on BF:Bad Company… I am loving the game so far but in SP campaign you spawn like in multiplayer. It goes something like this:
• 3 russian tanks vs. me, head to head on a golf course fairway. I somehow manage to destroy 2 of them before some foot soldier takes me out with an RPG. “You have been killed.”, the screen says! Seconds later I am in my spanking brand new tank right where I was blown up only to find that my opponents only consist of 1 badly damaged enemy tank and 1 foot soldier who is still reloading his RPG launcher. It is 1 step away from god mode really.
In Burnout Paradise, it helps if you drive to those places that have funny icons on the map… :)
Gas stations? Repair shops?
They explain everything to me, but not how to actually start the fun? :P
Man, I love Skate so much. Ah well. Different strokes.
Maybe I would love it too IF I COULD GET OUT OF THE TUTORIAL :P
Try the blue icons with white stars, those are race starting points.
I think there’s just one in the demo though…
[...] Skate and Burnout Paradise, where I respectively got stuck in the tutorial and failed to find the game. [...]