Saracen Reviews....

[Saracen 16]

Game: Burnout Paradise

Formats: X-Box 360 / Playstation 3

Developer: Criterion Games

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Release Date: Out Now!

Price: $59.99 / £39.99 / Eur 64-70

 

If you've heard of it, the Burnout Franchise needs no introduction whatsoever. It's an extremely fast paced series that is culminated of perhaps the best Arcade racing you can find anywhere. The Original Burnout in 2002 brought the high octane racing and boosting with insane looking crashes. Burnout 2 brought along the same classic formula and added trademark burnout chaining. Burnout 3 Takedown brought us crash junctions, takedowns and a slicker more immersive experience.

 

From this point the Burnout series took a little bit of a nosedive. Revenge was more of the same formula, but racing was somewhat forgettable and so were the race locations. Dominator went back to its roots and brought back burnout chaining, it also killed off the crash junctions in favour of just pure hardcore racing and reckless driving.

 

So now it's another year and we're in 2008. Burnout has now gone next Gen. The demo released on both the Live Marketplace and PSN, made this game look rather bland, dull and unexciting with almost everything sucked out.... So why have I chosen to spend my time writing this??? Well demos never represent the full game, so I took the risk of buying what seemed the worst Burnout so far of the series. It was an impulse buy, I've played all the others and got decreasingly less convinced that Criterion Games could pull this off. But anyway here we go.

 

Upon starting up the game and waiting a few seconds to go through that obsessively annoyingly long winded EA logo that you can never skip. The music kicked in. The music that happens to play is (as the title suggests) the classic Guns N' Roses track, Paradise City. So after rocking on to that for a bit, I decided to press the start button and get down and dirty.

 

Oh My God It Looks Gorgeous!

 

Upon pressing the start button I was taken immediately into the game... No menu rubbish here, the game had started. After a quick introduction, you get to start up your car. But as you've done that and accelerated out of a junkyard, you can't help but stop and look at how ******** beautiful this game is. Criterion have gone to great lengths to nailing the true to life atmosphere of the game. Paradise city lives and breathes just like it does in any Grand Theft Auto game, but this has 2 differences. Firstly you're not going to get out of your car and start gunning down pedestrians (because there are none). But secondly the whole 250 miles of city is open to you from the start, and you can go anywhere you choose to.

 

Most open world racers with the "go anywhere, do anything" motto are usually as false as grannies teeth. These past games such as the Midnight club games or even Need For Speed: Most Wanted have kept you to a pre-defined racing route, but then let you wander where you want to again once the race is over. This is all very well, but the game soon becomes a boring race hunt.

 

Well Criterion has done away with that. When you come up to a junction, you stop check the race type that's displayed in your HUD, and if you wanna take it you spin your wheels. You are then given an overview of the city, and told where you are, and where you've got to get to. How you get there however is up to you. There are no checkpoints to pass or invisible walls to slam into, it's just you, the start line, and the open roads of the city as you approach the finishing line from any angle you choose. Once it's over, you win, and another race gets added towards going to your next license.

 

When you start the game, you will start off with a provisional beginners license. As the game goes on and you rack up wins, you'll get more and more powerful licenses. But sticking to the same car will not do here. The bigger the license, the bigger the amount of wins you have to get, and the more powerful cars you have to find. Unlike in the past, there are no medals to be won here. You either win or lose, and the latter is not an option to advancing in this game. So in order to win, you don't just race, there are other modes too.

 

Other racing modes (other than racing) include the now classic Road Rage where you get to take down as many opponents as possible. Marked Man, which has you in a cop and robbers style car chase, and you're being hunted down. You win when you get to a pre-determined point without being totalled. Stunt Run is similar to Burnout Dominator's Maniac mode. The difference here is that the city is littered with ramps, and it's up to you to fly across the air, ramping off doing barrel rolls, and generally acting like a Maniac to get to the target score. And lastly Burning route, which are events tailored to specific cars, and require you to time attack from point to point to earn new rides. There is one more event, but I'll come to that in just a bit.

 

If Your Car Looks Like This, Then It's Probably Only Lightly Damaged!

 

Remember earlier, that I mentioned how Criterion Games have nailed the true to life atmosphere of Paradise City? Well it doesn't stop there, as well as a gorgeous next gen game engine and graphics are the ultimately cool trademark crashes. The first time you crash your car into something at high speed your jaw will just drop in amazement and more than likely to make you shout "Holy ****!!" as the car crumples, glass smashes, hundreds of pieces fly off, and the car quickly deteriorates into an unrecognisable wreck.

 

Such destructive nature is mirrored by the many destructively powerful comments you will shout as your car keeps crashing in many joyfully random ways. Even several hours in, you will not get tired of the many variations of crash there are. Even if you just clip a small portion of your car, the rest will remain intact as the part you've hit just crumbles in extremely life like fashion. And while there are no aftertouch takedowns or explosive paybacks this time, it doesn't matter.

 

If you're a driver in the real world and you like to go a bit fast, then Burnout Paradise will certainly deter you with its hugely sobering crash accuracy. For example... Even at high speed, a full frontal crash straight into a thick, solid wall is enough to see the whole front half of the car disintegrate. My only reaction to it as a driver myself, was "What the hell would I look like if I was really driving that car!"... Yep, so if there's ever an anti speeding message to inform drivers of the dangers, this game is probably it!

 

And the extra event? After the Burnout internet community demanding the dropping of crash junctions in Dominator, they suddenly wanted them back. Criteron responded by making them less boring, linear and methodical. Why not just blow your car up when you want to, and start causing mayhem. From here you just roll your car crashing into everything you land on, bouncing it further while steering the car onwards in a path full of destruction for as long as you can. The point of this may seem redundant to start with, but once you rack up major money, and major crashes, it just becomes so enjoyably fun that by the end of it, all you're steering around is a flat sheet of metal, because there is nothing left to the car. It's great to play, great to watch and so long as you keep the boost meter full, you can have your own flat chunk of metal too.

 

Music is one of the things that lets this game down. I have the PSP version of Burnout Dominator, and apart from a few extra tracks, the soundtrack to Paradise is identical. While it isn't particularly annoying to have these tracks again, it's somewhat of a disappointment. X-Box 360 users though will be lucky enough to put their own tracks in, which is somewhat better than the PS3 version I'm reviewing here, as we don't have that luxury. But, for the most part, it's a decent range of the usual rock/punk music etc, that we've seen in past burnout games. It's just a shame it doesn't work so well with the rest of the new improved Burnout.

 

Multiplayer is more of the same experience as Single-player, busting cars with up to 7 other players. The difference here is that the open world still exists. You can just ride around smashing into each other and causing more insane crashes. Or you can race, one of the many different modes, or go on challenges trying to do all sorts of crazy things.While at first you may seem rather lost in all the action going on, it soon becomes clear that this portion of the game is just as hugely enjoyable as the single player portion. The best thing about it is that you only have to press "Right" on the D-Pad, select a couple of options from small menu, and you're in. That's all there is to it.

 

You Really Should Drive Down To Your Local Game Retailer And Get This Now!

 

Conclusion

 

The open world nature of Burnout Paradise is truly the best seen in any racing game ever created. The seemless nature of starting a race, getting through it (whether you win or lose), then moving onto the next one without hardly any pauses makes this game a non-stop adrenaline rush from the moment you pick it up to the moment you put it back down. The details, the atmosphere, and the crash physics, the greater sense of speed, along with a very solid gameplay experience both offline and online makes Burnout Paradise the best Arcade Racer you can get on your X-Box 360 or Playstation 3. While some Burnout purists may be turned off my the format of the game, this is still Burnout from Beginning to End. Quite Simply, you owe yourself to go and pick up a copy of this awesome game now!

 

Score: 93%

[Doctor Destiny 41]

What cars do you get? If I can't any American badassery, **** this game.

[Saracen 16]

There are no licensed models, which they were planning to do. So they've taken the traditional route of making up their own types of cars once again. However there are many which do look like real world counterparts. The lotus Elise being one very recognisable shape in this game, as well as the Mazda Mx-5.

 

I forgot to mention in this review (mainly because I didn't want a larger wall of text). But in this Burnout, you are not given the cars on a plate with exception to your first one. If you want them, you have to wait until they're available, then once they are you've gotta find them cruising around the city. Then you do the right classic thing of taking them out to add them to your collection.

 

What you get in this game? Well it ranges from muscle cars, supercharged SUVs, hotrods, old style modified trucks, Tuners, sports cars of varying types, exotics and more. In total there are 75 cars to collect. But each is modelled beautifully, and smashes up just as well. So in Criterion's own way, yes there is some baddass american machinery, but that's if you don't mind a load of other car types.

[Luk3us 63]

Only racing game I've ever liked was Gran Turismo 4.

 

So in comparison to that, what is this game like?

[Alphabear 11]

What happened to your UaW review?

[Guest Spartan-117²]

Pretty Kick-*** game by the pics

 

Maybe I should get it when I get my 360

 

Besides, when did the Burnout Series have a "Real" Car name or model?

[Inferno 22]

Burnout has always rocked since Burnout: Takedown! Blegh, too bad I don't have 360

[Saracen 16]

Only racing game I've ever liked was Gran Turismo 4.

 

So in comparison to that, what is this game like?

 

Where the Gran Turismo series is widely regarded by many gamers to be the most realistic driving simulator around... The Burnout Series is right at the other end of the spectrum. We're talking , tight, responsive, insanely crazy and unreal arcade racing here. And like Gran Turismo, Burnout is considered the best in it's class... so that's about the only similarity to compare. But the game is just absolutely nuts, and it's just great fun through and through. The sense of speed in Burnout Paradise is just absolutely mind blowing, especially in the later cars where after some major boosting, you feel like you are driving the greatest and fastest road car on the planet... The 16.4 Litre Bugatti Veyron, and this car can muster 254 mph

 

What happened to your UaW review?

 

Dunno, but what you can do is head to IGN, read that, remove the gripe surrounding the camera, then add on a bit more how Frank Klepacki's Music rocks and then give it an extra 0.1 increase in the score.... That's my review. It seemed pointless in mirroring exactly almost word for word what had been written almost 100 times already.

 

I love the game, I truly do. It still stands as my favourite RTS of 2007 and 2008 so far. But it pains me to write something that I cannot give much of a personal touch to, cos all I'll be doing is mirroring most of the same old tripe.

[mormreed 0]

review was pretty awesome, just another reason I want a PS3 Rock Band, CoD4 and now this, I need a PS3 burnout has to be the best racing series of all-time, Takedown was so amazing

[TheBlackOut 7]

CoD 4 for console? Could never do that after PC.

[Inferno 22]

It's impossible to aim with a console... at least for me >_>

[mormreed 0]

It's impossible to aim with a console... at least for me >_>

yeah me too still wanna try it anyways

[Doctor Destiny 41]

It's impossible to aim with a console... at least for me >_>

Then that means you fail at aiming.

[Inferno 22]

Then that means you fail at aiming.

Silence! I kill you!

 

Aiming with the mouse is easy, it's just that I don't nearly play consoles enough (as in, close to never) to be even decent at aiming with them.

[rEdaSbLood 1]

ok first off, saracen do a review of CoD4 coz i LOVE it...second bioshock review?

 

now to burnout paradise, i played the demo and it was pretty fun. awesome crashes and tasty speed effects..

good game