63. Burnout Paradise
PS3, 2008


The second consecutive 2008 PS3 game I got for free because of the PSN hacking debacle! Thanks, hackers! I profited from your antics and have yet to suffer from any fraudulent purchases made using my stored debit card information.

This is the best 'traffic racer' bar none for me. From the moment I went to select the game and Paradise City started playing, I was loving it. The introduction video, the free roaming, the excellent variation in roads to drive on, the epic crashes, the various race options, the licence system... oh man. This was excellence in racing for me. Danielle really loved it, too, and that's saying something for a racing game. The soundtrack was so good I downloaded it. My favourite races were the ones in which you total your opponents, but even slipping through traffic in a one-on-one race was great. Picking a different track than your opponent and still coming out ahead? Awesome. But taking the same track and being side-by-side and forcing your opponent to go head-first into traffic? Oh, hell yes.

Basically I enjoyed pretty much everything about this game despite not expecting much of it (hey, I did get it for free, after all). Racing games aren't generally considered amazing for me... this one was.