Sometimes it just takes one magical mess of a game to bring innovation to a stale genre, laying the groundwork for other developers to build upon. Driver: San Francisco would take the open-world racing game and give it a crazy plot, with the best script to ever feature in a driving game (thatвЂ™s barely a compliment, so IвЂ™ll be more explicit вЂ“ Driver: San Francisco is one of the best-written games IвЂ™ve ever played). ItвЂ™s a great many positions away from perfect but its innovations were plundered by other developers to great effect. Not since some other rando had beaten me at Rocket League about 20 minutes earlier, anyway. IвЂ™ve never hated someone more in my entire life. I even start rehearsing his eulogy and practising how IвЂ™d boot his vehicular corpse into one of those machines that turns cars into cubes. I slam down the accelerator and the boost, refusing to let up until the body of my nemesisвЂ™ car is scrap. I bash through other, weaker cars, determined to right this injustice. Suddenly youвЂ™re in the same spot but now there are up to seven other players zooming around to take you down, all without breaking the action. Criterion envisioned a model where joining an online game was all of three D-pad taps away. Playing online used to involve watching a menu screen until the race started. An open-world driving game sounded ridiculous in 2008.

The racing, once the difficulty ramps up, still holds up today, even if some odd design decisions donвЂ™t.Д«ut I can forgive inane narrators and misty streets when the game introduced so many ideas we take for granted now. ItвЂ™s all worth it though, for the brilliant drifting opportunities. (Burnout ParadiseвЂ™s often frustrating lack of guidance sings in moments like these.) Later I start a race to the Crystal Summit observatory and remember to cancel all my plans for the afternoon because it takes about three bloody years to get there. I start a race to the Country Club and then ignore the suggested route in favour of one IвЂ™ve made up, because I knew it would get me there quicker if executed perfectly.

Burnout paradise city