Burnout Paradise Review
Developer: Criterion Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rating Guide: How I Review Games
Guest writer: Dave ‘DJSteel’
Review:
Ever since the original Xbox, I have been on the look out for the sleeper hits that either fellow gamers or reviewers might have recommended. For the most part, their recommendations have been mediocre at best because I feel sleeper hits are a personal taste. What is good for you may not be good for me. That is my motto for sleeper hits. Now the title that got me looking around for sleeper hits was Burnout. The first two installments were minor subtle releases that received a huge fanfare. The racing parts in these titles were mediocre to say the least, especially when compared to the big hitters in the racing genre like Project Gotham Racing or Gran Turismo. This was mainly due to the generic car models and the arcade-like handling.
The meat and potatoes to the Burnout series was the crash mode, in which the user has scenarios were they crash their cars into traffic and try to accumulate the most amount of damage in dollars to the other vehicles. I always wondered how they would tackle a free roaming environment with their type of racer. Well, behold the first fully developed next- gen Burnout game with a huge free roaming environment. Could it possibly live up to the series while evolving it into a free roaming racer?
Gameplay, Graphics and Sound
Burnout Paradise takes place in a fictional location where you start off at a junkyard and you receive a junk car. Once you get the car, you can do whatever you like. Almost every intersection provides an event in which you have to hit both triggers to initiate. These events range from Road Rage to Showtime. Road Rage, which was in previous installments of Burnout, is an event where you must wreck a certain amount of cars. Anywhere you drive during the event, your opponents will follow while trying to run you off the road. Burning Route is an event where you much reach a certain point by a certain time. Marked Man is also a point to point event where you have to reach a certain point while your opponents try and wreck you. Each event provides different goals you must achieve before a challenge is considered complete. Besides the 120 events, there are sixty-four Road Rules challenges.
One part of the Road Rules challenges are time trials and the other part is a new mode called Showtime. Showtime turns your vehicle into a tumbling wrecking ball. As you race your vehicle down the street, your goal is to run into as many vehicles as possible. It is a very interesting yet weird mode.
The game also provides various points to refuel your nitro, repair your vehicle, and change your vehicle. There are 80 vehicles to collect throughout the game many of which you have to go head-to-head with in the game and wreck them before you can access the vehicle. There are also some other things to watch out for in the city. There are 400 destructible gates hiding shortcuts, 50 super jumps, and 120 billboards which are scattered throughout the city. Each unlocks cars and completes achievements.
The graphics are done really well. Criterion created a huge cityscape with tons of traffic and amazingly no lag in the game. One complaint I had with the game was that there was noticeable lack of color in the game. All of the buildings were pretty much grey and brown. They were very detailed but yet no color, which I found kind of strange. The cars were different colors but nothing really popped out at me. The other strange thing was they didn’t include people in the game at all. Every car, including your own, had no driver in it. I could not figure out why they decided not to include small details such as these.
The soundtrack is decent and the DJ can be helpful but after a couple of hours I turned off the sound. The car crashes also sound great especially when the metal bent. Other than that, the sounds are not something you really pay attention to while playing this game.
Xbox Live Extras
The online portion of the game is really easy to access. By pushing right on the D-Pad you access your online listings of friends and games to play. You can then join an area to complete online events or just race and have fun with friends. There are particular achievements that you can only complete online, some of which count on you being victorious in races. There is one achievement where you have to takedown an opponent who already has this achievement unlocked for you to complete the achievement. The online mode is seamless and I hope more games will use this type of functionality in the future.
Conclusion
I am extremely happy with Burnout Paradise. The game is huge and will take a long time to complete all the events, find all the smashes, billboards, and jumps, and unlock all the cars, let alone going online and enjoying in that part of the game. The game is an arcade racer at heart, but the real fun is in the other modes available like Road Rage and Showtime. I recommend this title to anyone out there. The only problems I had with the game were not having any people in the game and that the DJ gets annoying after a while. If you are a racing game fan and you enjoy simulation, you might not rank this title nearly as high as I do, but the demo does not do the game justice.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I haven’t played the full game yet but that’s a pretty damn high score. I noticed you didn’t mention something that seems to have bugged everyone else who owns the game, the inability to quickly or easily restart races, or the difficulty with following the map.
Were you not bothered by these things DJSteel?
January 30th, 2008 at 10:01 am
“the inability to quickly or easily restart races, or the difficulty with following the map.”
Great point Intangible, I couldn’t agree more with you on these points but after awhile I seem to have found a way to overlook these things (the map deal gets somewhat better when you look up and get near a turn the road label you need to take start blinking and making a chirping noise letting you know which road to take…still far from perfect IMHO), due to the great fun the online mode has provided, the killer soundtrack and over all pure chaos the game delivers. Also I noticed that it doesn’t have any type of 2 player split screen, that sucks. But again me and a couple of friends have been playing it online and that to me is where this game really shines. Great post.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:06 am
i must play this. hopefully i can pick it up this weeekend.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:18 am
You’ll dig it man, great game overall.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:22 am
ehh.. seems nitpicky to me.. so what if you have to go back to restart the race, plus I can can complete some road rules or showtimes on my way back to restart the race. It seems lazy to complain about no restart. Plus it would defeat the purpose of open world racing if you can just click a button and magically end up back at the intersection.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I think you would have given it a bit higher score than I would have, but it’s a matter of opinion after all. DJ Atomica should be shot, and I found Paradise rather bland, but that’s just me. But you did a great review. Good job, DJ.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:49 am
if it gets budget, i’ll buy it for sure.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Hmmm might have to give this a rent
January 30th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Good review and I’ll at least try the demo myself. As far as racing goes I really like Forza 2 Motorsports myself and what it has to offer. I’ve tried the PGR demos and didn’t like those as much. I liked the Burnout Revenge demo, so I’m sure I’d like this one too.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
As I said before, I actually thought this “Burnout” was a step back. I applaud them for trying something new, but it just didn’t feel right to me with the open-ended world. Some of the flaws were the failure to not be able to ‘restart’ or ‘warp’. Others are huge like the map. I just found it hard to follow the map when you are racing full speed let alone during a race. Sorry, but speaking of races, I prefer the track to be closed off like the past Burnouts instead of this open-ended world where you could easily take the wrong way. I also miss “Crash”, which was my favorite part of the past Burnouts. I see how EA was trying to follow “Test Drive” with the open-ended world and online ability, but I just feel they didn’t implement it as well. I will admit that the Vision camera use is awesome during takedowns and even for your driver license. I was really looking forward to this title since “Burnout” is my favorite racing franchise, but ended up being disappointed.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Great review!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Great review. I’m loving it so far. It really shines when your doing the coop challenges with a room full of friends. There are some minor annoyances I have with it to, but I see Lantern already covered them
January 30th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I had a lot of fun in co-op as well…it really is a great game (and I’m not even into racers either)…as some of you have already said though the map is hard to navigate and make some of the races & challenges difficult…all in all though it’s a fun title and you summed it up pretty nicely…great review DJ
January 30th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
great review, have wanted to pick up this game for a while. Thanks for making the urge so much bigger
January 30th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Great Review DJ, Cant wait to get my hands on this one but sadly the funds are lacking at the moment.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Good Job, DJ! Burnout Paradise will be spinning in my newly repaired (or new???) 360 when it returns from the shop. I can smell the burning rubber now….
February 1st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Great review! I need to pick this one up at some point!
March 11th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Sorry, but this review falls far short. I understand that you like it, but at least warn consumers of the pitfalls we all are beginning to realise are out there, as so many people find this purchase so disappointing. I’m one of those people. If you’re into single-player racing? Fine. But Burnout was about the party mode for a huge portion of its audience, I actually think this series’ success was a premonition of the popularity that would translate into the success of Wii. This has NO CRASH PARTY mode, and not even mutliplayer offline racing option (no split screen). For those who loved this aspect, your 9.4/10 review is misrepresentative of this game.