[37] Triforce Heroes
After over a week of attempts I finally beat the last boss, which certainly cements this game as the hardest Zelda since Zelda II.
I’ll post more over at the Triforce Heroes thread, but the game really surprised me with its approach to cooperative Zelda, it has the perfect blend of puzzle solving and combat, while being demanding enough to demand constant cooperation between you and your two fellow heroes.
[38] Critical Velocity
Surprisingly inspired racing game from the remnants of the Ridge Racer team who were presumably busy with Ridge Racers and Ridge Racer 6. The open ended map design is rather excellent for the purposes of hosting its missions, but the free roaming falls short of other games from the era.
[39] Burnout
Never thought I’d see the day, I got stuck on the penultimate championship for years and thought the game was near unbeatable.
But after a long break I found myself approaching it differently. If you drive defensively the game is much more manageable, don’t fall in to the trap of trying to be as fast as possible. The AI racers are less of a threat if you spend more of your time on the road instead of crashing, which is more likely to happen if you focus on hitting top speed above all else. I managed to top the time and score leaderboards for the final event, so I must have been doing something right, haha.
I thought this interview with a Criterion designer was intriguing:
IA: Yes that was the last thing I really did at Criterion was the dlc. Did you ever play a Konami arcade game called Thrill Drive?
LC: I may have played it.
IA: If you play Thrill Drive and Burnout 1 they’re virtually identical.
LC: It came up on the Burnout 1 podcast as an inspiration.
IA: It was more than an inspiration from what I was told. I joined after that happened but… Burnout 1 was so hard that Sony refused to certify it because they couldn’t complete it. [Criterion] had to submit a video of them completing it.
Only letdown is how the credits, and special thanks section, don’t make any sort of nod to Konami, despite the game owing a ginormous debt to Thrill Drive.