Yeah, I got lucky and stumbled upon it. I missed the first couple rounds....they had some decent deals too.

I did get my ELITE though.

If you missed out on the Amazon Halo 3 Legendary deal, Walmart has it for $59.82. http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=5515989

Great deal although Amazon's FREE shipping and no sales tax was just slightly better.

I'm pretty letdown by Burnout Paradise. Not nearly as good as Test Drive. The lack of a speedometer pretty much kills any authenticity. The camera angles are a bit wonky. It doesn't appear you can truly customize your car. And "Over 70 cars" is definitely NOT something to brag about.

Good one, dude.

Oh, first time playing the series.

And on the opposite end, I'm LOVING this so far. And by this, I just mean driving around. It's fun as hell just ripping around the city.

That said, I can see the actual race/time trail events are going to take some getting used to. It's hard to look at your map and the direction you're supposed to be going in, because the second you take your eyes off of the road you crash. I don't know if I'm going to be a big fan of that.

But just based on the open world driving, that is great. Leaps and bounds better than NFS:MW's city driving. Driving around that world felt pretty tedious at times.

Is traffic checking not going to be in this? And how are they going to handle the crash mode? Hmm?

Why would you even drive around NFS:MW's city when you can go to a garage at any time to do your races and/or cop chases?

I know you can start races or events while driving around the city but with a push of a button (as long as the cops aren't chasing you) you are back at a garage ready for another event without having to drive from point to point.

I only spent about 15 minutes in it and wasn't blown away yet. Kinda hard to careen down the opposite side of the street at top speed and look at a tiny ass map on the bottom corner of the screen.

Wasn't too impressed with the wrecks either compared to Revenge. The windshield shattering into a million pieces was impressive though.

There's no arrow pointing you where to go? Lame.

If anyone cares, Call of duty 4 is $40 at Amazon today with no tax and free shipping

I'm looking forward to playing the Burnout demo, but I'm worried about what I've read about the gameplay changes, more open-ended and such. I love the current formula (Revenge is the best in the series), and don't really want the series to turn into another Need For Speed Underground title. I can spend most of my time just on the Crash segments and not bother with racing at all.

Unfortunately they removed Crash mode from the new game. Between that and the open ended world, I definitely won't be buying this game.

I was pretty disapointed by the burnout demo. From the coverage at E3 the were talking how great it was.


The graphics are pretty good. but I hate the open world stuff. I think the open world is cool for mulitplayer but for single player its pretty boring. this is a game that doesnt work well with a open world. You go so fast trying to avoid cars and are suppose to keep looking at the map to see where to go. I like the orginal races that the other games had. The other ones had me the moment I raced this one. The races I was playing in werent fun in the open world.

I think I might actually pass on this game. I hate that all racing games seem to be doing the open world stuff.

Forza, Dirt, NFS : Pro Street, Moto GP '07, and Sega Rally are just a few examples off the top of my head that AREN'T open world types.

There really is only one other open-world type of racing game, and thats Test Drive Unlimited

Yeah the only open-world racers I've played on the 360 were NFS:MW (good game, but gets hard fast, slight framerate issues) and TDU (a simply great racing game).

Midnight Club is open world, so was LA Rush.

You know, it was and that didn't bother me at all, so now I'm a little less worried about the racing in Paradise. I do think that the camera was better in MC for open world driving though. It was further back, so it was easier to see upcoming turns and the general road in front of you. Not to mention the graphics weren't as intricate, so there wasn't so much stuff on the screen assaulting your senses.

I didn't realize you could do this. Honestly, I only played MW for a handful of hours, and wasn't taken with the game enough to keep playing. I loved Hot Pursuit, but MW felt off to me.

That has been an issue for me with these past 2 Burnouts (Revenge/Paradise).
In racing games I much prefer the further back viewpoint so I see more of what's
around me instead of a closeup of my car's trunk. Don't like the no car view at all.

They don't pull back the camera in Burnout on purpose, because it deflates the sense of speed they're going for.

I'm playing Flatout right now and that's one of my beefs with that game. The car is friggin huge. You can't see the turns coming because of it.

Pretty sure Burnout 3 had the 3rd camera option (or if it didn't, the car wasn't
so big in front of you) and that was the best of the series imo in both gameplay
and sense of speed. Paradise, no matter which camera view you choose, doesn't
have all that great a sense of speed (to me at least). All the demo did was to
make me want the new Midnight Club all the more.

And that generally worked great in the last two versions, since you only had to keep your eyes in front of you, but with so much going on in the screen that you have to pay attention to, it adds an artificial challenge to the game. At least in these early gaming hours.

I've been reading a lot of reaction to the demo, and there are a lot of complaints going on, but I'm banking that a lot of the problems people are having with the demo will fade away once they get used to the game, myself included.

I think it's kind of amazing how only a small section of the city is available to drive in, yet it is insanely diverse. There is a ton to do there, and it's not even a tenth of the city.

I hope that there is a way in the final version of the game to be able to jump into a race online. If you have to depend on everyone to agree to wait at a light to start a race, I can see that being a problem as well. Here's hoping to a straight up race mode for online play with random people. Otherwise, it will all ways turn into a takedown battle.
There isn't a giant arrow, no, but there is a directional guide. It's more like a rolling compass or something.

Okay, having played the demo a little more...

* I agree that the camera angle options suck.
* Am I the only one having problems even seeing the traffic lights where you're supposed to initiate races and such? I keep stopping at exit signs.
* No speedometer? The hell?

I kept driving through intersections only to smash into a barrier of the game that is blocked off in the demo.