G-pinions

So, do I have the gall, nay, the authority, nay, the sheer sack to pick the ol' GOTY already? I mean, Resident Evil 4? Choice. Oddworld? Money. Electroplankton? Sublime. Pirates!, which I'm currently playing and will report on soon enough? Well, solid for the most part. But Burnout "Makes Your Heart Explode While Playing" Revenge? I think it's been decided. I played the new Traffic Attack mode at E3, as you may remember, and it was expectedly great. The new demo, which you can find absolutely free at just about any Best Buy? Well, I just played through it three times, and I couldn't not write about it (despite having to work in several hours). I mean, nothing has changed that greatly. Maybe it's just been a while since I played the series, and the shockingly perfect gameplay has kicked me out of this gaming lull I've had quite recently. The feeling of smashing an enemy car underneath a semi, and then blowing up your pursuers, it just doesn't get much better. Most games don't offer that sense of satisfaction if their entirety, and in Burnout it happens every ten seconds. It's like eating cardboard for a year, and then having your arms torn off. See, it's so great that it's metaphors aren't even sensible. I don't give a relative crap about new hardware launches when fun like this can be had right here and now, and then for real in September (when the final game hits shelves). Stop eating for two months, pawn your baby, do what it takes - just be ready to buy this. Oh, and Alex Ward over at Criterion is a genius (not that the rest of the team isn't, I just didn't see them give a talk); one of my favorite moments of E3 was watching him lose the attention of nine-tenths of the room (basically everyone but me, Tom and the other developers on stage) while spending ten minutes explaining how Burnout 3 was based on bowling, and Burnout 4 is based on golf. Glorious.