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.