10 Video Games Nobody Admits Are Annoyingly Overrated

4. Burnout Paradise

Metacritic: 88

When you have a franchise predicated on arcade racing, quickfire track/car selection and a set of mechanics like slamming other racers into the tarmac, DO NOT make it open-world.

Doing so widened the amount of potential course layouts, but introduced a somewhat 'improvisational' feel to going from A-to-B that was anathema to learning courses inside out. Where before you dropped into races to perfect specific turns and stunt ramps, now it was a case of triggering random checkpoint-chases, trying to discover a 'line' and mastering that instead.

The quintessentially accessible tenet of Burnout was gone, replaced with the 2000s-influenced 'need' to make everything fit an open world ideology. Needless to say, that killed the intensity associated with the franchise to this point, forced you into doing a TON of collectible-mining busywork, and ended up being the last proper Burnout Criterion would ever develop.