Look! It's evolving!

This has nothing to do with Pokemon and everything to do with gaming. Well, gaming franchises, rather.

After having played some older games in a franchise, followed by some newer ones, it's very weird to see how drastically some things can change. Let's look at the beloved Burnout series of games.

The previous 4 games, Burnout 1, 2, Takedown and Revenge are all very similar. Almost the same game each time. Yes they're good, but there isn't much of a difference. Exactly the same mechanics, all the same (or similar) cars. Then come Paradise. It reinvents itself as an open world racer. Not only that, but it doesn't do what the NeedForSpeed series did, and lock out 80% of the area. The entire world of Paradise City is available from the very beginning. As you drive around you'll see various food chains, car dealerships, and so on. There are no menus. No merely going from one event to the next (although you still can, kinda). It's all very open and all very freeform. In fact, when I first started playing, I did a few event and then just drove around the city for an hour or so. Even if you're not in an event, there are things to find and do (not that you have to). Another good things they've done is that once you rank up, all the event wins are cleared, and you can win those same events again. This means you're never stuck with only the types of races that you suck at.

It's all such a drastic change, and so different from previous games. Although I would say that this game is definitely the best in the series and, if anything, the only problem I have is that there is no quick navigation to a race like there was in the NeedForSpeed games. There's not even a GPS to guide you to an event. Even though there may be an event less than 10-20 seconds from where you finish, that's not always the event you want to do. In the case of Burning Routes (time runs specific to each car), it sucks when you fail and want to retry, but you have to go back to the very beginning, because that's where the start for your current car is. The ability to jump to an event, or GPS navigation to it would've been a nice addition.

And for the people who say there aren't any load times. Why do you think that screen pops up whenever you start an event? There's no reason to waste 5-10 seconds every time you start an event, other than load times. It's just like good editing, it's seamless, almost invisible. Just because it doesn't say Loading... doesn't mean it isn't there.

I also found it interesting that between PGR2, 3 and 4 that the changes were quite.. Interesting. In PGR2 you won Kudos by winning races, and that was the currency. In 3 Kudos are a measure of your rank, and Credits are the currency. Now in 4 there is a separate, more realistic, rank system, and Kudos are the currency. Again. Also the career mode of 3 is now the arcade mode of 4, and the career of 4 has been reworked.

Woot for rehashed games and true sequels.