Ever since having my interest piqued at the Ready Up World record attempt back in April, I’ve sunk my time into the game, allowing it to snatch my evenings and consume my weekends while my gamerscore slowly gained a rosy glow under the drip feed of achievements.  To be honest, at first, the game was merely a taste to show support for those playing through 24 hours – after all, driving games had never interested me and cars ‘aren’t my thing’.  All talk of torque leaves me scratching my arse and wishing the Top Gear crew would skip to whatever caravan demolition derby or race that they have planned for this week.  But something strange actually happened here…Burnout Paradise sucked me in within moments and I soon realised that this ‘mere driving game’ was so much more than I had dismissively branded it.  It became indelibly stamped upon my gaming consciousness.

The free-roaming style of the gorgeous open city and surrounds absorbed me with its  events at every junction, enticing smashables, and different gameplay which, instead of having the driver loop tedious tracks, encouraged free choice, exploration, and served the city up as a playground to game or cruise in.  It rewarded the player for not only venturing off the beaten track and testing the hidden nooks and delights, but for being as anti-social as they felt like.

...and a predatory metallic black by night

Online play has typically been something that I have also avoided, muttering endlessly about ‘online achievements’ and ‘unnecessary multiplayer modes’, but again, this game forced me out of my shell of hermitude and into endless online freeburns where challenges were knocked down and the general chaos of the squealing metal free-for-all smashes were the order of the day…and night, and weekend, and holiday until it was all I played, talked about, and saw every time I closed my eyes.

Paradise City began to enslave my soul, haunting my dreams with angry boost bars, tumbling smash gates, and endless, winding tarmac.  Every night, I prowled the foggy streets like a killer with a steel chassis as my frock coat and four Criterion tyres as my tools of evisceration.  Innocent gates cowered beneath my beams and fell even swifter beneath my wheels, while I surveyed the rising body count with twisted euphoria.  Blue jump lights drew my obsessive attention, luring me into alleys and onto dimly lit boardwalks with the promise of orgasmic heights and I was never disappointed…they too succumbed to my urge to claim and collect, the lights laying haphazardly at the scene of the crime while the city swallowed my fleeing predator.

'scuse me love, have you seen a billboard around here?

One of those rare moments was forming where that elusive alchemy between game and achievements was discovered, as progress was rewarded without the game becoming a chore.  It was as well balanced as the tyres on my rebellious Dodge Charger…sorry…’Bootlegger’.  And that’s something else that began to warp and change…words began tumbling from my mouth like a sorcerer’s ribbons…I began bitching about ‘oversteer’, ‘cornering’, and ‘how tight’ something handles.  As the Burning Routes began too, to fall like dominos beneath my relentless determination, I sampled more and more vehicles and the complaints began to come thick and fast… one particularly shitty vehicle ‘handling like a morgue on wheels’ and another committing the crime of being ‘as responsive as a decomposed corpse.’  All this from a darkly dreaming gamer who for months couldn’t even work out how to get onto the damned I88.

Jack and Rosco, the last of the trio who helped me become 'Elite'

Fellow carnage creators and hunters often kept pace with me during those evenings, weekends, and marathon sessions, ripping up the streets, working on achievements and challenges, all the while taunting, laughing, crashing.  Every player seemed to have their favoured tool of choice…The Rook with his Carbon GT Concept leading the way to every challenge like Gandalf for the rest of our questing pack or Libitina’s lethal Peggles…a sadistic pink wrecking ball from hell that shunted many a fearful vehicle into the jaws of oblivion.  That was until Arkham Asylum’s eerie corridors lured them away and the streets of Paradise were lost…and with the lone game as complete as it could be with the reward of my Criterion Elite license, I felt the same way.

A recent visit re-confirmed the odd feeling.  With the smashes gone, the billboards wrecked, and the roads ruled, coupled with the natural migration of fellow gamers and the last proud achievement tucked away, Paradise City is slightly emptier now. Slightly sadder.  For a game that truly captured my time and enthusiasm enough for me to sink endless hours, week after week into it, in a genre that I had never looked twice at, it is quite an achievement that I feel mournful as much as elated…and for all 60 of those achievements, that bauble-less one is perhaps the most impressive.

Personally I love to read the manual.  I like to hold the controller in my hand and get a feel for the controls, read any back story, study important stats, and get a feel for the HUD before I dare to fire the game up.  I like to know what I’m doing, where I’m going, and why.  Not everyone does, however and this was never more clear to me than after returning home from a recent trip to Glasgow to watch the Ready Up World Record attempt.  Partner and myself both arrived back with a copy of Burnout Paradise and while I settled on the bed and cracked open the manual, I could hear the whoosh of partner’s Xbox booting up in the next room before the strains of Paradise City immediately began to filter through.  I actually stopped reading and considered banging on the wall.  What was he doing?  He couldn’t have read it that quickly.  Nope, he didn’t bother!  But, but…stuttered my incredulous brain, how could he not?  Why wouldn’t you?

It boggles my mind, but he isn’t alone – my father is worse, even extending his, ‘nah, that’ll be alright’ approach away from gaming to everything from flat-pack furniture to shed construction.  Thankfully my sister at least shares my incredulity.  After (quite foolishly) convincing my father to try the satisfying but tough ancient Egypt management game, Pharaoh, she lovingly printed out the manual from the budget CD-Rom and gave it to him.  It got nary a second look.   Hours later, he declared the game stupid…the reason?  His townsfolk were being decimated by Hippos because he hadn’t bothered to read the manual and had no clue what to do next or how to get lazy remaining workers to build those ancient wonders.  It served him right.  “Did you read the manual?”   No, was of course, the defensive answer.

Flash forward to Oblivion.  For a long period of time my other half groused about trudging to and fro between towns and places and the time swallowed in doing so.  It was only after clocking up a large number of gaming hours that he discovered the fast travel option.  Where had this gaming gold nugget of information been hidden?  Yes, the manual.  Which he hadn’t read.  Now, there are some games you could argue, you don’t need to bother, but with a game like Oblivion, taking a flick through may just be of import, especially when at that all important character creation stage, and certainly the same case can be made for a tricksey and often brutally unforgiving management game like Pharaoh.

I suppose I just don’t get why you wouldn’t read the manual, but I grudgingly accept that there are some to whom simply wading in is perfectly natural…but on their head be it.  So if your Glass Boots are wearing thin from walking to the Imperial City or your villagers are being menaced by assorted Nile wildlife, it’s your own fault if you didn’t bother with manual.  With my measured approach, I may not beat anyone to the disc-tray to fire up a game, but at least I know what the yellow dots are on the Paradise City map and my Egyptian villagers won’t incur the wrath of Anubis…because that just stings.

You will read them...