It struck me like a bolt of lightning, while playing Burnout with my God-Son. Of course, I’m getting school-ed by a 6 year old, but that’s not the point of today’s thoughts. After a race or two, I began to realize how much fun I was having with the game. Bustling through the corners, and powersliding for points to unlock tracks became a sizable challenge for Marquell and I. Both of us forgot about everything around us and were focused on the task at hand. Like a bolt of lightning, it hit me. I didn’t care about the fact that this game didn’t have Live support, or a Cross media Bar. No one sent us a friend request and the graphics didn’t have that Unreal 3 engine shine to them. It was a fun game with really good graphics. 2005 was the year that everyone was forced into Next-Gen, whether we were ready or not. The hardcore had to upgrade to the newest systems and Hi-Def T.V.’s to enjoy that new expensive piece of hardware. Burnout Paradise is a great game. It has that nice coat if shininess and all of the next-gen appeal. But, is this game more fun than Burnout Dominator for the PS2? I don’t think so. I think they are both great games, and the graphics on the PS2 still hold up today. That’s why Nintendo is stomping on the competition. Not only does Sony have to worry about Nintendo and Microsoft every month. It also has to worry about the PS2 cutting into those PS3 sells. I love my Xbox as much as anyone else, and I can’t wait for the day to hook up a PS3 to my HD big screen. At the end of the day, I just want to relax and have a good time; I don’t need Unreal Engine 3 to have a good night of gaming with my friends. It doesn’t matter if I’m the only person on my friends list to still play Castlevania:SOTN. I don’t have to wait for the newest update to my Dashboard to stay excited. All I need is a game and a system to play it on.