Burnout Paradise
In Burnout Paradise players are treated to a rarity in the video games universe: a complete reinvention of an established franchise that equals, if not betters any of the previous games in the series. Yes, this is a large claim, but one that can be explained in a single phrase: Next-Gen Freedom.
Driver’s heaven is a wide open world |
In Paradise City even cars can fly. View larger. |
Go for broke in ‘Marked Man’ Mode. View larger. |
Nothing is off limits, even head-on crashes. View larger. |
Start a race any time with ‘Easy Drive.’ View larger. |
Although the Burnout series’ over the top mobile action has been its calling card since it ignited audiences on the PS2 in 2001, and later on the first generation Xbox console, Burnout Paradise is the first game in the series that has been designed specifically for play on Next Generation consoles. This has allowed game developer Criterion to rip the training wheels off the game and rebuild it from scratch. The result is a new, expansive world that players can roll through at will. And what a world it is.
Enter Paradise CityHeaven on Earth, at least to road-raging, crash-causing
Burnout fanatics, Paradise City is your domain and ultimate proving ground in
Burnout Paradise. This expansive driver’s playground stretches across 250 miles and encompasses all sorts of road driving conditions, from fun-in-the-sun seaside cruising boulevards, to mountain roads and downtown gridlock. But regardless of what stretch of asphalt you find yourself on, the beauty of this place is that nothing is blocked off and your wits are at least as important as the horsepower under your hood when it comes to racing here. Check out Paradise City’s five sub areas (
click the links for sample images):
- Downtown Paradise City
- Harbor Town
- Palm Bay Heights
- Silver Lake
- White Mountain
Burnout Your Way
Unlike in previous Burnout games, Burnout Paradise not only puts the keys to your ride in your hands, but places you squarely in the driver’s seat when it comes to where you can go and what you can do.
Along with wide avenues and crowded highways, the open game design of Paradise City is also jammed full of hidden side streets, back roads and alley ways. These can be used as short cuts in races, that is, if you know where they are. As you explore, commit these potential short cuts to memory because they will definitely come in handy in a tight race. And since we are talking
Burnout here, players should not expect uneventful, genteel contests of speed and precision driving. In Paradise City players are always free to slam, shunt and wreck opponents in their bids for supremacy and they will. Also, new to the
Burnout series, races can now start anywhere, anytime. Just pull up to a stoplight and spin your wheels to start one in one of five different event classes:
- Classic Race
- Road Rage
- Burning Route
- Stunt Run (new)
- Marked Man (new)
Instant Online
Burnout Paradise also keeps the mobile carnage coming while simultaneously setting the new standard in online social gameplay. With the new `Easy Drive’ feature you can find friends online and with the click of a button invite them to a race. Once they’ve accepted the race will start immediately. That’s right, no more annoying wait times at online lobbies and servers. And keeping in touch with friends is easier than ever.
Team up or TakedownIn the winner-take-all universe of
Burnout teaming up usually isn’t the first option that comes to mind, but on these rough and tumble streets it’s a good option to keep in mind. With more than 300 FreeBurn Challenges packed into the game, players always have the choice of going it alone against the field as a whole or joining forces with up to seven of your buddies in user-created race routes. Either way, if you are victorious in your takedown you’ll get the chance to talk some trash as you exchange Mugshots with your victim via an optional camera hooked to your gaming system or your gamertag/PSN avatar if you prefer to keep your identity on the down-low.
Showtime: Crash Anywhere, Any TimeAnd finally since a new
Burnout release wouldn’t be complete without a little something special in the wreckage department,
Burnout Paradise continues the carnage with an update of its familiar ‘Crash Mode.’ Renamed ‘Showtime Mode,’ players can now crash, bounce and scatter their ride in any location and replay the wreckage over and over in slow motion. One of the most addictive and down right fun features of the game, players activate the mode by simply pulling both triggers on their controller and if they are good enough can also immortalize their Showtime moments on the leaderboards for all to see.
Driving fans this is Next-Gen at its best and definitely the
Burnout title you have been waiting for.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars They’ve done it again!
Burnout Paradise for the 360 was my next step after owning Burnout 3: Takedown for PS2 (yeah, I skipped Burnout Revenge, I’ll go back for that sometime). I was looking forward to seeing the burnout graphics in all their HD glory, and wasn’t expecting much in terms of gameplay given the negative reviews. I was surprised, however, to find that this is largely the same game as Burnout 3, and in many ways better. The graphics, firstly, are nothing short of phenomenal. The crashes are just ridiculously well-rendered with an amazing amount of detail and attention to physics. The whole game plays with such a fluidity to the animations and stark contrast between crashes and fast-paced racing that you really have to wonder how the programmers pulled it off, because the game plays like a professionally rendered movie with zero chop. Burnout manages to take the perceived speed and danger of Burnout 3 up another notch and delivers breathtaking graphics at the same time. Playing this in HD is a real thrill. I don’t think there’s any other racing game out there that can give you an adrenaline rush even close to what this game gives you.
I’ll summarize:
The good:
-The open racing enviroment is huge, with plenty of different places to explore. It’s a pain in the butt to get used to the navigation, but it gets better with time.
-The graphics are just unbelievable. Great car bodies, fantastic scenery.
-Good AI. The AI on this game is way, way better than on the previous games. Little details like the drivers going in the other direction flashing their highbeams at you and swerving out of the way just go to show you that a lot of thought went into this game.
-More involving, thanks to the fact that you’re stuck in the city and have to drive yourself around and everything.
Cons:
-About that… you have to drive yourself everywhere. End a race on one side of the gigantic world and want to try your new car? Sorry, you need to drive all the way to the other side to get to the junkyard. Also, you can’t just end a race or restart it…real pain in the neck.
-Drifting is not what it used to be. Burnout 3’s best feature was its insanely intuitive and smooth-feeling drift. Criterion tailored the drift in this game to work better with the frequent right-turns and such you have to make, but it lost the smooth feeling the old game had.
-Aftertouch takedown. It KILLS me that they removed this. This was quite possibly one of the most inventive parts of Burnout 3, and now it’s gone.
The cons are painful and add up, but it doesn’t prevent this game from getting 5 starts from me. This is a quality game, and for the price amazon is selling it for, it’s really a must-have.
5 Stars ALOT of fun, even if there is little subtance
WOW this game is fun! If you love racers, then I don’t see how you could possibly go wrong with this title (especially at the price it is being offered for now!)
It is an “open racer” which means you are not limited the standard “loop” that most racers impose. You are free to explore the vast maze of streets. The goal of a race is to get to the finish line first. How you get there (whether you follow the route, find a shortcut, make your own shortcut, or just destroy all your opponents cars) is up to you.
The physics are absolutely ridiculous. I can take a 90 degree turn at 150 MPH in a 20 year old junker car I found at the junkkyard. I can jump 500 feet in the air, land, and just keep driving every time. I can knock over traffic lights, lampposts, and plow through dumpsters - and just keep on driving.
The AI is also kind of stupid. Cars kind of just wander around the track and are pretty easy to trick into crashing. (albeit I am not that far into the game, maybe they get smarter.)
None of this, however, even slightly detracts from how FUN this game is. Sometimes you just want to drive around, crash in to things, enjoy the gorgeous graphics, and perform ridiculous stunts.
Try running this game on a big screen with surround sound for the full effect. Yeah, I think I’ll take another “sick day” today!
2 Stars Different, innovative, but it lacks the basics of the originals and the cars are so-so.
I would make some word play by calling this review “Burned-out” but this game dosen’t feel old despite being the 5th Burnout title. This game has the fun of the last 2 but this time the creators, for some child-like reason, gave into their dislike for loading screens by giving US and sand box enviorment, so in other words this game is like Midnight Club but without convieniant check points or arrows. You’ll be driving +150 with an El Camino wanting to ram you into that oncoming van but oh weight, you gotta pause the game to pinpoint that next turn, then you return to the game only to see your Chevelle wrecked. Many of us are aware that the game lacks a restart option and crash mode but my main complaint is that most of the interesting cars are DLC, that would be okay if this games cretors were nice BUT wait, they want us to pay money! Sure its only a few dollars but come on, thats a few dollars just for some data plus over 40 kind car modellers have contributed cars for Midtown Madness’s 1 and 2, the Need For Speed series, the Carmageddon series, and many other PC games, they’ve done and are doing it for free. Despite the supposed poor shape of our economy, game companies still want your dough. The cars that you get are your average Tuners, muscle cars, and trucks\suvs, no Tow truck or Garbage trucks like before. I’d suggest that you’d pick up Burnout Revenge as its more user friendly or Burnout 3, this game feels incomplete and you can’t play split-screen which is a feature that you could find on SNES games.
5 Stars Best driving game ever
I enjoy driving games. I like “arcade” style over “simulation” style, though, because arcade controls are more forgiving. Games like Gran Turismo 4 aren’t my bag, and Project Gotham Racing 4 style sort of rides a good line between arcade and simulation.
Burnout Paradise is that perfect arcade driving experience I enjoy. I started into the Burnout series with Burnout 3 Takedown and they’ve just gotten better since then. With Burnout Paradise, you get the whole package: a huge environment, tons of cars, lots of different events, and downloadable content that they just keep shipping. (You’ll definitely want to check out the “Legendary Cars” pack.)
The interesting thing is that I’m not really big on the racing aspect of the game. I mean, it’s fun, but I much prefer the “Marked Man” and “Road Rage” events. (”Marked Man” is where you have to drive from one point to another while other cars are trying to run you off the road. “Road Rage” is where you have a certain quota of cars that you have to run off the road.) I wish there was a game that was just “Marked Man” and “Road Rage.”
I only have a couple of criticisms.
First, some of the races and “Burning Route” events (get to a certain location in a certain time limit) are REALLY hard. I’m not that good at this sort of game, so it takes a few tries sometimes and can get controller-throwingly irritating. It would be nice to be able to turn down the difficulty. I like a challenge, but I have my limits.
Second, since the map is big, it can take a while to get from one side of it to the other. You have to drive everywhere to get to the various events, and sometimes you want to get to an event on the other side of the map, which becomes just tedious to drive all the way over there. Thank goodness in a recent update they added the ability to restart an event without having to drive all the way back to the starting line - that was ridiculous.
Finally, the menu interface is not intuitive. The right-arrow on the directional pad has a lot of stuff in it that’s not documented in the book. Some functionality is only accessible via the right-arrow menu and you’d expect it to be available in the menu when you hit the start button… but it’s not. Figuring out how to connect to friends online the first time is a challenge. Once you figure it out, it’s no problem, but it’s not really documented well and the first time can be frustrating.
Those are pretty minor complaints in the face of everything else this game offers. Great soundtrack, great graphics, and amazing amounts of fun. Almost endless playability since there are so many events, so many collectibles and hidden items, and generally so much to do. The online experience is fun, too, with lots of challenges to play and various freestyle game modes (you can create custom races, for example). For under $20, the value this thing offers can’t be beat.
5 Stars Awesome game!
Very fun game with great graphics. Alot to do in the game such as never ending wrecks where you can control the wreck and what your car does. Alot of fun and I would reccomend this game to everyone who likes racing games
Buy/More Info
PS3 Games Racing & Flying Betters, Boulevards, Burnout Paradise, Driving Conditions, Expansive World, First Game, Game Developer, Games Universe, Gridlock, Heaven On Earth, Marked Man, Mobile Action, Mountain Roads, Next Generation Consoles, Palm Bay, Paradise City, Previous Games, Proving Ground, Reinvention, Training Wheels
