It's good, but like the demo, I had the most fun just driving around and exploring. I didn't like the area in the demo, mostly right angle turns because it was typical street grid. So with the full game, I immediately drove west to the mountains. Smashed over 100 fences and like 25 billboards in the hour or two I played. Lots of great environments and things to discover.
I do think learning the maps will be key. I only did a handful of events, and I didn't like the fact that a couple times during each race I'd hit the Back button to pull up the map, so I could take some mental notes, such as "stay on this road and take the third left". I know the game tries to indicate when you turn, but often it was too hectic for me to be able to follow those directions.
I don't see why quick travel to locations couldn't be implemented. If you don't like it, don't use it. At the very least, during or immediately after an event, there should be a restart option. Most events that I failed, I was so far away from the start point, I didn't want to backtrack. At least there is no shortage of events, since every intersection has some. Only once did I fail an event, and then backtrack to restart (Burning Race, so I wanted to win the reward car) - and I didn't like doing that.
The Road Rules challenges are a neat idea to "own" roads. But I'm not sure how much I'll be playing these events, because Showtime mode is a weak alternative to the Crash mode from previous games.
Haven't tried online, but found quite a few areas of the map where I can envision multiplayer being a blast. A good example of this was the beach area in the demo, where they have the barrel roll ramps set up. Found a neat little dirt track, with steep banked turns. A downtown area with a fountain. Or driving inside the baseball stadium.
So it's a good game, the demo was representative of the type of gameplay you'll get. You will have to accept that racing will be more freeform and less rigid, compared to previous Burnout games. Be prepared to navigate the map. No circuit races, everything is point to point, and there are only 8 finish lines across the city, so you are always racing to the same landmarks.
I do think learning the maps will be key. I only did a handful of events, and I didn't like the fact that a couple times during each race I'd hit the Back button to pull up the map, so I could take some mental notes, such as "stay on this road and take the third left". I know the game tries to indicate when you turn, but often it was too hectic for me to be able to follow those directions.
I don't see why quick travel to locations couldn't be implemented. If you don't like it, don't use it. At the very least, during or immediately after an event, there should be a restart option. Most events that I failed, I was so far away from the start point, I didn't want to backtrack. At least there is no shortage of events, since every intersection has some. Only once did I fail an event, and then backtrack to restart (Burning Race, so I wanted to win the reward car) - and I didn't like doing that.
The Road Rules challenges are a neat idea to "own" roads. But I'm not sure how much I'll be playing these events, because Showtime mode is a weak alternative to the Crash mode from previous games.
Haven't tried online, but found quite a few areas of the map where I can envision multiplayer being a blast. A good example of this was the beach area in the demo, where they have the barrel roll ramps set up. Found a neat little dirt track, with steep banked turns. A downtown area with a fountain. Or driving inside the baseball stadium.
So it's a good game, the demo was representative of the type of gameplay you'll get. You will have to accept that racing will be more freeform and less rigid, compared to previous Burnout games. Be prepared to navigate the map. No circuit races, everything is point to point, and there are only 8 finish lines across the city, so you are always racing to the same landmarks.
