So Burnout Paradise, the newest edition into the series for the Xbox 360 / PS3 and soon to be windows platforms.
Ok to jump right into the review if your reading this you've proberly
played any of the 5 or 6 games that are in the series which means your
wondering, exactly how does this stack up to the rest...?
Well if you are you'll be glad to know that Burnout paradise is by far
the best game in the series, bar only a few quarks here and there.
As soon as you pop the game in you'll be greeted by the great looking
start Menu that is playing... of course Paradise City ( the Guns and
Roses song ), However this is where the great Soundtrack ends as
through out the game the differed music is pretty much terrible for the
most part.
As well as the sound track or even before that when you get in game
you'll notice an array of different colour and spectacular visuals that
is proberly the best around in any given racing games, also for the
most part the Frame rate does stay at a steady 60 FPS with little to no
drops even when adventuring online or racing with high speed boosts.
Now after you've gotten past seeing how great the game looks, you'll want to see how great the game plays!!
For the most part it's great you can cruise all around paradise city
and any speed you like, take any route you like, but this brings up the
first and proberly the main Issue the game has and thats the fact that
if you have played any previous Burnout Games you WILL find the open
world environment the game has extremely overwhelming, this is mainly
due to the fact you'll be cruising down a road full speed with boosts
on ( trying to win a race ) when all of a sudden '' CRAP !! which way
do i turn !! '' so you try too look at your Mini-Radar.. '' Ok so i
turn left '' ( You look up ) ''Damn i crashed ! ''.
I myself and friends of mine had this happen to us several times because when your racing you have to do 4 things:
1. Try to win the race
2. Try to avoid oncoming traffic
3. Look which way to go
4. Trying to find the quickest possible route
Now doing these four things is pretty customary after a while and it
becomes like second nature EVENTUALLY but as soon as you pick up and
play Burnout Paradise doing 4 things in the space of around 3 seconds
is alot harder.
Within Burnout Paradise there isnt just racing but altogether 5 different even types these evemt types are:
Race: Races consist of the player and at least 1 other car. The player
is given a location to race to. The player can take any route through
the city to the location with the aid of a flashing road names at the
top of the screen when the player is advised to turn. First one to
arrive wins. This is currently the only available mode online. Online
races can also include checkpoints that need to be crossed before
reaching the finish.
Road Rage: The player is given a target number of takedowns and a time
limit. A Road Rage event is won by meeting or exceeding this target in
the given time limit.
Marked Man: In this event, the player is given a destination. At least
1 opponent is trying to stop the player from reaching the destination
by scoring takedowns against them. The player must survive from start
to finish in order to win (the player can be part of collisions, but
loses the event if he totals the car).
Stunt Run: Players are given a target score. They must earn points
towards that score by using boosts, jumps, drifts and other such stunt
moves.
Burning Route: Each Burning Route requires the player to use a specific
car. Once the player is driving the required car, they race against the
clock to a specified location. When a Burning Route is won the player
wins an upgraded version of the vehicle they completed it with. The
upgraded vehicle can boast extra boost power, more base speed or a
stronger body (but usually in exchange for another category). This is
the only kind of event that doesn't reset when the player earns a new
license because it's tied to the car used to run it rather than the
license level the player is presently at.
Now reading this you may possibly be thinking that '' Road rage must be
kinda like crash mode, from Burnout Revenge right? '' ...
Well no it isn't, infact there is no crash mode in Burnout Paradise
what so ever instead a mode called '' SHOWTIME '' has been added in
it's place..
Unlike in previous Burnout games, Crash Mode, now called Showtime, can
now be started at any time and place in the game; though Showtime mode
is rather different from the usual Crash Mode.
Basically after completing a certain amount of the game ( only like 5 %
or so ) the always annoying DJ atomica basically shows you how to
activate and do '' showtime mode '' and this is started by driving and
crashing into a AI car and just before impact pressing and holding the
trigger buttons to activate it, after activation your car starts
rolling out of control into other veichles ( this gets you a type of
points ).
Now to move you simple press A on your controller and the direction in
which you want to move, however as soon as your boosts runs out the
showtime stops and you return to normal play, the only way to continue
showtime is by hitting other cars to regain boosts, that or hitting
Busses which add a multipliyer to your score.
As well as singleplayer Burnout Paradise came shipped with Online capability which is very simple to use if you have XBOX LIVE available
to you.
Pretty much anytime you like during singleplayer by just pressing one
of the directional buttons on your 360 controller and selecting free burn online, the good thing about Burnout Online is that its so
quick and simple to use as you choose a free burn session and BOOM...
it's loaded.
Also all this is does is bring other players icons onto your radar which
is great as there is no loading time and it's as if they have joined in
on your single player session rather than the other way around.
Another feature implemented into Burnout Paradise is the new '' MUGSHOT
'' option which is pretty funny to you as if you or your opponent has a
Xbox vision camera you can see their frustration picture the moment you
take them down or beat them in a race.
When a player is taken down, they will have their photo taken, called a
mugshot, and shown to the aggressor. These photos can then be saved to
your hard drive.
Just being able to Free-Roam and race isnt all burnout online as to
offer either as there are around 300 unique challenges that you can do
with friends of strangers online to unlock certain things.
Overall Burnout Paradise is an outstanding game that newcomers and Fans
to the series will find overwhelming at first, but if enough time is
put into it, will throughly enjoy and spend many hours playing as its
not only a treat for the eyes ( amazingly great visuals ), but for
everything ( apart from the sound track XD ).
The Good:
Outstanding visuals
Online is pretty easy to get into to
Alot of modes to try out
Dozens of cars to unlock
The Bad:
Pretty steep learning Curve as first
The Ugly:
Poor soundtrack over all
