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Burnout: Paradise Review

by Steve Wysowski March 1st 2008 9:16 PM CST2 Comments

In my opinion, Criterion's Burnout series has always been the holy grail of racing games. Perectionist racers like Gran Turismo have never been my cup of tea, and if you were to give me the option of some motorsport-simulator or any arcade racer, I'm going to choose the latter everytime. Call it bad taste if you'd like, just my preference. So, as one would expect, when I first heard about Paradise, I was excited.

However, after finding out a radical change was being brought to the Burnout series, my original "wave" of excitement turned into a tsunami of paranoia. Apparently with Paradise, Criterion was taking a radical departure to the series' formula. The questions in my head raged on: Will it be for the better? Will it suck? Why am I talking to myself?

Well, despite my chronic paranoia, its relieveing to say that Burnout: Paradise absolutely rocks. The new open-world gameplay enhances the series to new heights past iterations couldn't match, and adds a new flare to the series that people probably don't expect to see. I can proudly say any worries about Paradise City should be extinguished, as this open ended racing experience may easily be the best of 2008 (Yes, I have looked at the calendar, I know it's only March).

The basic Burnout forumla that we all have come to love has been relinquished to the nuance that is Paradise City, an open world setting where gamers are welcomed to do anything they please. Clearly Criterion had a crush on 2006's Test Drive Unlimited world, as the whole tropical oasis setting is at hand. But thats not to say the game is a blatant copy of the TDU, because it it isn't. Paradise City is a beautifully complex, urban metropolis that is executed extremely well for what it is trying to accomplish; something that TDU didn't do at all.

Past it's beauty, the city acts as a living replacement of a menu system. Instead of flipping through events and races in menu screens, you simply drive to them within the city. Yeah, it can be a pain in ass sometimes, but usually an enticing effect occurs. The atmosphere that the city brings to the table is something no menu is going to give you, and by game's end, you're going to wonder just why the hell Criterion didn't think of it sooner.

In order to move in and around Paradise City as you please, you must be in-tune with all of the city's road systems and infrastructure. Memorizing routes probably doesn't sound fun (it isn't, and the fact I suck with directions doesn't help), but you'll eventually get enough repititions to get the city's streets and highways down. You are given a compass to help get you to your selected locations, but Criterion saw it necessary to make the compass so small that it is impossible to see with the naked eye. So unless you have a microscope on hand, it's not going to come into any use.

The actual racing is just as intense as it always has been, and while the incredibly fun crash mode has left the building (R.I.P), the blood-pumping atmosphere remains present as always. One of the larger additions brought over to Paradise' gameplay is the brand new crash animations; which may be more fun to watch than playing three "quality" XBLA games. While maybe not as impressive as last year's DiRT in terms of physics, their over the top qualities make it infinitely more appealing. Some crash ideas seem to be taken from the movie "Fast and the Furious" though, but luckily none of that movie's crapiness reflects onto the game (Paul Walker may very well be the anti-christ of action-film acting).

While everything that I have about Paradise is all amazing and fun, Paradise City still has one trick up its sleeve. Paradise City is intertwined with Xbox LIVE perfectly, and you can swap between the single player and the online interface with a click of the D-Pad. High scores, leaderboards, and other players are all just a drive away, bringing the once alternate reality into an online highway. It really connects the game with reality in ways you just don't see too often, and sometimes you may even feel Paradise City is a real place (of course, you'd be mentally retarded if you don't snap out of it after three seconds).

Paradise isn't perfect though. For some reason, you can't start an event over after already starting one. So say your car blows up for example, and you know there is no shot in hell that you're going to accomplish an event's goal, you're still going to be forced to wait for the competition to end. Not only that, but after your done with that, you have to climb back to the start of the event, meaning you can be wasting up to 5-10 minutes trying to restart an event. See, I wait in the real world for things to happen, and waiting usually sucks. I don't see why anyone would want to go through all this hastle in a game, but Criterion saw it necessary. Seems like only one flaw, but it really is a bitch to deal with after every race.

Despite that one blip (and yeah, its a big one) Burnout: Paradise prevails. While I was nervous at first, Paradise City won me over, and it'd be hard to imagine a better Burnout experience than this. Anyone who enjoys arcade racers has to check this game out, and anyone who doesn't should as well, because you'd be a jackass to miss this game.