Paradise

To borrow a headline from The Daily Mail, HOORAH FOR COMMON SENSE.

Criterion's finally conceded and added a 'restart' option to Burnout Paradise. I played quite a bit of Paradise, but I never really got past the resentment. It looks nice, and the racing itself is still sound.

BUT.

No crash junctions? Gay. And the stupid mini-game they replaced it with is extraordinarily poor. Then there's the fact that it's a racing game, but you spend as much time pausing to look at the map as you do steering the car because unless you play for 100 hours you never know where you are or where you're going.

The most annoying thing by far, though, was the lack of restart, necessitating a GTA-style trek back across the game world every time you lost. The whole "open-world, no menus, mental immersion, I'm-like-totally-there-dude" thing is a great example of a sad triumph for ideals over playability. Wonderful in Alex Ward's head, I'm sure, but dreadful for poor souls wanting to enjoy the game.

A reality that was all the sadder owing to Criterion's praise-worthy and unparalleled post-release support for the game through free DLC. And the fact that they managed the impossible and got the game to actually run smoothly on PS3 without crippling the frame-rate or resolution.