I've been wondering about this one and where it was my whole entire life. Who would've thought that there's a game in the Burnout franchise...that breaks away from the previous entries...by giving players a COMPLETELY OPEN SANDBOX WORLD TO DRIVE ABOUT? You can also partake in various events that are scattered throughout the map. Various cars and other vehicles can be unlocked. Not only that, but it is even the first Burnout game in the series to include online multiplayer, which includes various modes such as Cops 'n' Robbers, races, stunt runs, etc. What's even better is that Criterion Games has recently remastered this game for release on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC, and like all other games in that generation, it's backwards compatible with newer gen consoles! Unlike Activision, EA did not add microtransactions into the game and made all DLC for free!
With its superfab visuals that are still great by today's standards (in fact it's can be seen as one of the best looking game of the franchise), it brings the Burnout franchise into open world for the first time and it works great with many places to explore while merging the classic Burnout formula with the open world adding an extra layer of difficulty and creativity to races. Because of the aforementioned open world, the races themselves are also more open, with multiple routes and shortcuts to take. Paradise City additionally has a lot to do, such as billboards to smash, shortcuts to open, insane jumps to take, the list goes on. In addition the DLC's especially Big Surf Island are amazing with Big Surf Island giving an additional island to explore.
Stunt events are also new to the series, where you earn points for driving like a maniac! However, regardless of your license class and depending on the Stunt Run, Road Rage, Marked Man, or Race event you choose, the difficulty can range from insultingly easy to insanely difficult; there's also no way to instantly restart events, so you have to drive all the way back to the starting point if you fail! Thankfully, however, an option to restart was added in an update and has been maintained in Remastered. Even some other features of importance, like the motorcycles and day/night cycles were added in via content updates. And I must also not forget to mention the introduction of Repair Shops which can be used mid-race to mitigate the chance of totaling your car, Gas Stations which can provide an instant Boost top-up and Respray Shop which can change between car paint like gloss, metallic and pearlescent.
Depending on which cars you use, you might have one that is for example balanced, strong but slow, or fast but hard to control adding a layer of strategy to the choice of vehicle. Additionally, other vehicles other than cars can be driven in races for the first time since 2003's Burnout 2. The insane sense of speed proves that nothing beats flying through the streets at high speeds while narrowly avoiding traffic! And as for the crashes, they're realistic, brutal, and satisfying, even though plans for an advanced crash physics, with the ability of cutting a car in half, was cancelled due to budget constraints. There is no speedometer at all, sadly. Why was this not included is anyone's guess. Thankfully, there are mods that add one to the game. The physics aren't even that great, but no, remember, it's not a racing sim or a realistic driving game, so advanced physics are not required. And I also forgot to mention that Stellar Entertainment nerfed the airtime for the Jansen Toy 88 Special so it wouldn't fly as far.
Unfortunately, similar to BeamNG.drive, a car crash/driving simulator released by five years later in 2013 and on Steam in 2015, the cars have no driver(s) unlike the bikes. However, you might think that the former are ghost vehicles or remote-controlled because of that.
The engine sounds are amazing (thanks to NFS), especially the Watson 25 V16 Revenge with its Porsche Carrera GT' (Project Code 980)'s V10 engine sound from the Black Box and Autolog era of the Need for Speed series, and the Hunter Racing Oval Champ with the BMW M3 (E46) GTR (sort of) engine sound. And in addition to those sound effects, don't forget the phenomenal soundtrack featuring artists such as Brand New, Guns N' Roses, Killswitch Engage, Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction (my favorite!) and Sugarcult. It also includes songs from the prior Burnout games, which is also a nice touch, even though it might be seen as lazy. “Finger on the Trigger” by Never Heard of It and “Everyone has Their Secrets” by Showing Off To Thieves are the only exceptions having been removed from the Remastered version, possibly due to expired licenses, which doesn’t make sense because both songs are credited and have a .swf file in the executable.
After version 1.1, everything has been unfortunately downscaled or downright removed. From crash filters (when you crash, the screen will go black and white, but leaving the red colors), to physics, to even Impact Time and its ambiences, which people found scary. And that slowly removes Burnout Paradise's "what was the great stuff about Burnout since B3", which is a lighthearted game about going absolutely bonkers in a car, running on pure, unleaded, nightmare fuel. Even certain features, such as auditory (like car engine sounds) and visual ones from the unpatched game on consoles were altered between versions 1.1 to 1.6.
The last gen version's (along with the original PC version) servers were sadly shut down first thing on August 1, 2019. Online functions are non-functional for the original versions of the game, which was also delisted from digital stores as of January 2018, meaning those players can no longer get the Jansen P12 Diamond (which can be unlocked by completing all 500 Freeburn challenges) or drive the Hunter Olympus and Nakamura Rai-Jin Turbo (which are both online exclusive cars) due to lacking servers.
No matter what anyone says, the intense and fun gameplay, as well as having open-world gameplay with unlimited fun, proves it's a real summer in paradise for everyone, baby!