It’s time to strap in, hold tight and put your pedal to the medal because the king of crash is back. Criterions Burnout series has always been about racing at blinding speed, taking down your opponents and risky, aggressive driving that rewards players with boosting power and spectacular, cringe worthy crashes. Burnout isn’t a pretty boy racer series or for those who are interested in realistic driving simulations, though the cars in Burnout have always looked great and handled smoothly. It’s about boosting along traffic filled streets at neck breaking speed and causing those gloriously rendered crashes, pure adrenaline and twisted metal. It's a winning combination that has help make Criterions speed freak franchise the king of arcade racers.
Their latest offering, Burnout Paradise, is no exception, with even more outrageous speed, beautiful graphics and crashes to die for. Had the developer done nothing more than use the power of the ‘next generation’ systems to wildly crank up the sense of speed and make the crashes more exciting many gamers would have been perfectly happy. But never ones to rest on their laurels, Criterion constantly tweak the Burnout formula offering something new to players each time. Burnout Paradise goes further than any previous game, implementing major changes that redefine the series and some minor ones that don’t quite hit the mark, but don’t overly detract from an impressive game. The result is arguably the best Burnout game to date and a thrilling high octane racer that every gamer should check out.
The most important change in Burnout Paradise is the shift from a structured racing game to an ‘open world’, leaving set levels behind in favour of the titular ‘Paradise City’. Right from the start, as you cruise into it to the sound of the classic Guns N' Roses tune ‘Paradise City’, the city is yours to explore in its entirety. You can go anywhere and do anything you please in this bustling traffic filled city. The ‘open world’ concept even extends to the games menus system- there isn’t really one to speak of. Just about everything is done in game, as you initiate races by driving up to traffic lights and spinning your wheels. It’s something that may leave some players initially confused when confronted by the vast expanse of Paradise City and its surrounding countryside, but it’s a wonderful playground once you get to grips with it.
Even before you start to enter races, just driving around looking for hidden areas, dodging through realistic traffic and attempting hair raising stunts like Super Jumps will keep you entertained for ages. Criterion has also made some game play changes to driving in Burnout Paradise. Gone is the ability to ‘check’ traffic that marred Burnout Revenge. You’ll be kept on your toes avoiding traffic on both sides of the road this time rather than ploughing through cars on your side. On the flipside the cool slow motion ‘aftertouch’ mechanic that let you steer your wreck into opponents when you crashed during races in previous games is gone. Other than that it’s pretty much manic business as usual, as you try to build your boost meter by taking out opponents, jumping ramps, drifting and driving on the wrong side of the road.
Paradise City has the flavour of all the previous Burnout games tracks combined, running from the mountains to the coast, so you’ll find tight urban roads, huge freeways and countryside filled with hidden areas to discover. There are some nice touches like gas stations dotted around Paradise City that automatically refill your Burnout meter, and repair shops that automatically repair your car, allowing you to extend a Road Rage event beyond a car's damage limits or get that extra boost needed to win races.
Nearly every intersection of road hosts a new event of some kind with more than 120 dotted all over the map. The familiar Burnout racing events take on new depth in the open world of Paradise City. In races you’ll need to use keen driving skill and intimate knowledge of the city to create your own route to the finish. While the game uses a basic navigation system to tell you where to turn, and you have a mini map to help guide you, you’ll want to learn as many shortcuts as you can to rack up the wins. It can seem daunting at first but you quickly learn the cities ins and outs. Road Rage, the classic Burn Out battle mode where the objective is to destroy of as many opponents as possible is even more exciting in a city. You’ll find yourself battling down narrow ally ways one moment, and fearfully hurtling down busy freeways in the wrong direction the next. Few things beat taking down cars and causing high speed carnage in Paradise Cities Road Rage-it’s easily our favourite mode. The Marked Man event sees you using the busy streets for cover as you evade a group of hefty assailants seeking to wreck you before you reach your goal. Stunt events will see you trying to rack up the highest score possible as you ramp, flip and barrel roll around the city, desperate to keep your stunt combo going, and Burning Routes challenge you to beat set times around the city in specific vehicles.
There is a downside to the open world nature of the game -if you lose an event, you can’t automatically try it again unless you go back to its start point. It’s annoying at first, but with events all over the place you just learn to just roll along to the next one. It only becomes a real problem towards the end of the game when you start to run out of races. Your reward for winning events is new cars, either directly unlocked for you to use at the junkyard as you gain better ‘licences’ or introduced into the city at large for you to take down and then use.
While there are no licensed cars in Burn Out Paradise, only look-a- likes of familiar brand rides (after all it’s hard to see any car maker being happy at their cars getting as mangled as they do in this game) the car designs are fantastic and there are about 75 rides to unlock. Cars are classed as Stunt, Speed or Aggression models. Stunt models are light and suited to jumps, Speed models are able to ‘chain boost’ for incredible speed, but can only boost on full meters and Aggression cars are hefty and strong, perfect for the rough and tumble of Road Rage. At the beginning of the game it won’t make too much difference which cars you use, but as you progress you’ll want the right tools for each job. All the cars handle as they should and it’s a joy to burn around Paradise City, but at the mind numbing speeds you can reach just expect to crash a lot. Which given how great the crashes are really isn’t a hardship.
There are a couple of minor event modes in the games which don’t give you rewards but you might play the entire game without ever doing them if you don’t do the online challenges. Road Rules sees you setting best times on each road in the city and Power Parking awards you points for slamming your car into a parking space between two cars. Sadly the puzzle-like ‘Crash mode’, where you attempted to cause expensive multi car pile ups at specifically designed junctions in previous Burnout games is gone. It’s been replaced by ‘Showtime mode’ which is fun through totally silly. Tapping LB and RB while not in a race flips your car into a crash but keeps you in control of the wreck and slows down time. At that point it’s up to you to steer your flaming metal snowball into a many other vehicles as you can, racking up points for each destroyed. The boost meter in this mode keeps your car tumbling, but you’ll need to keep hitting cars for it to fill up and once that chain is broken you grind to a stand still. It’s fun, but doesn’t have the depth needed to replace Crash mode.
The online mode in Burnout Paradise especially well implemented. Rather than calling up menus or going into online servers, a simple tap of the D-pad opens up the online menu where you can invite friends to your game, set up race events or join games. The city itself is the game lobby and you’re online without a hitch, continuing down the same road. Once online you can enter ranked and custom races or do online challenges. There are literally hundreds of them, designed for two to eight players and can involve anything from all meeting at a point in the city, to every car in the group ramping off a certain bridge and doing a 360 degree flip. You’ll need to have a very dedicated group of friends and a lot of time if you want to unlock them all.
Fantastic graphics have always been a hallmark of the Burnout series, but it’s worth mentioning how gorgeous Burnout Paradise visuals are on the Xbox 360 and PS3, especially in HD. Running at a rock solid 60 FPS, Burnout Paradise looks amazing and the sense of speed you get can actually freak you out. The series trademark crashes are more intense than they’ve ever been, with cars realistically deforming and breaking apart at high speed. None of the cars have drivers in them and its little wonder, the carnage done to them would be terrible! Metal scrunches, twists and breaks, windshields shatter, wheels rip off and each crash looks and feels very real. That’s all helped by the top notch sound in Paradise, as the roar of engines, squeal of tires and the sounds of crashes, right down to the tinkle of broken glass, scrapped asphalt and crushing metal, are all reproduced with painfully clarity. The only part of the sound that you might not like is the in game car radio. It features the most annoyingly smug DJ in the world and some great and not so great artists like N.E.R.D, Alice in Chains, Jane’s Addiction and Avril Lavigne, but many songs just don’t fit the mood of the game.
Most players will be more than pleased with Burnout Paradise. It brings together the best elements of the series, combining them with the fun world of Paradise City, creating a near seamless on and off line driving experience. Criterion has managed to put chaos in a bottle once more, creating a game where even the simple act of crashing is a joy. While some series fans may initially find the open world shift a little bewildering, the scale of freedom is very much in the spirit of Burnout and above anything seen in a racing game so far. This one is highly recommended, so rush out and hit the road.
Score : 4.5/5 Excellent !
Burnout Paradise is available on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 now.
Reviewed by : Sam Bandah
