15 Most Overrated Video Games Since 2000

9. Burnout Paradise

The game that killed Burnout, I'm sad to say.

Looking back, you can pinpoint the good and the bad of Burnout: Paradise, with the overriding sentiment being that yes, it opened up the genre to all sorts of side mission-filled design tropes, yet took the focus away from drop-in, drop-out arcade racing in the process.

For me, Burnout lost almost all of its core appeal when Criterion took it away from being a racing game predicated on picking courses and cars in quick succession.

The appeal was booting into certain tracks you began to know like the back of your hand, challenging yourself to overcome time trials and slam the competition into specific hazards you'd pinpointed last time round. As soon as that idea was branched out and spread across an open world, it introduced a level of improvisation to your driving and actions that I really didn't like.

Bring on a new Burnout at some point, but please, Criterion, make it more like the earlier few.