Zero Punctuation: Burnout: Paradise

Again two thougts:
a) he mentioned Carmageddon! Had a lot of fun with that one… but as I’ve discovered recently with the ocasional frustrations when crassing in Flatout 2: I’ve started wondering why crashing and taking curves using the wall was fun there but is frustrating here. I think the answer is, as it frustratingly common, difficulty: in Carmageddon the competition did the human mistakes I did, took time to explore the scenery, got lost, wasted times in curves… you can’t really enjoy crashes and stunts if you’re under pressure. You need to be relaxed and enjoying yourself to focus on crashes and stunts and exploration, not woried that somebody’s going to take the 1st,2nd and 3rd place as Yahtzee so eloquently puts it. This is the second time in recent memory that Carmageddon popped to mind: the other one being when I finally got around to playing a bit of San Andreas: it’s nice that it rewards stunts, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as it was in Carmageddon because you have to do really rare ones to get noticed and even then the rewards are tiny: Carmageddon rewarded you both for exploring (hidden areas) and even when you ‘failed’ (fun crashes appreciated by bonuses & money)… all in a "no pressure" atmosphere. Burnout world with Carmageddon principles: now there’s a game even a person such as myself (don’t care about cars) could enjoy.
b) I think Yahtzee missed the point: I’ve discovered how to enjoy Burnout with previous installments in the series: one hour after work: with it’s loud music, high speed & cool graphics it’s a very nice shot of adrenaline coming home from work all tired/bored-like. But then you should stop… That way you avoid frustration too and you don’t notice as much that you’re "level grinding"… well, actually I stopped for other reasons: my eyes were all red and hurting :P there’s just so much I can take of that speed. I suspect Yahtzee tried to play the game continuously for long periods of time :P

PS: again, I’m not a car enthusiast… actually I’ve often wished there were less vehicular games… but wrap it in enough speed/graphics/adrenaline/interesting backgrounds and I might be willing to give it a try and see what all the fuss is about.. Well, maybe it’s my way of excusing myself for not playing simulation realistic games :P