Burnout Paradise

On startup the game will load and will automatically play “Paradise City” by Guns ‘n’ Roses. This is a good touch but gets repetative after a while, there should have been an option to disable it. To start the game originally had 75 cars to unlock. Now with the new extension packs you can buy from the Playstation Store or Xbox Marketplace there are several more.

All the cars are divided up into diferent boost categories. These are Aggresion (Red), Stunt (Green) and Speed (Yellow). Speed Boost acts like the boost in Burnout 1 and 2, you have to wait until your boost is full before you boost and the boost button must remain pressed down or you have to fill it up again. There are also now Motorbikes. These are extremely fast and easy to control and have a different challenges to complete.

The free roam feature is exclusive to this Burnout game, also events are far more flexible. Instead of a linear guideline to follow you can take your own route anyway in the Paradise City. Paradise City is considerably large and is divided into eight main locations or destinations: Maplemount Country Club, the Coastguard HQ, the Waterfront Plaza, The Wildcats Baseball Stadium, the Fort Lawrence Naval Yard, the Lone Stallion Ranch, The Wind Farm and the Crystal Summit Observatory.

The names of places or streets have actually been taken from previous games. For example Crytal Summit Observatory comes from Crystal Summit which was featured as a race track in Burnout 2: Point of Impact. Particular locations are more dense in buildings and traffic than others. Downtown you’ll find a lot of intersections and more traffic to avoid.

Instead of the popular Crash Mode, in this game there is Showtime. As you crash you hold down both the look back button and the next song button simultaneously and you will go into Showtime. Pressing the boost button will propel you off the ground (Ground Break) and hopefully into more traffic. Your boost bar decreases each time you Ground Break and increases each time you hit traffic. You bonus multipliers are the amount of buses you hit, 2x for one bus, 3x for two buses and so on. This mode of play is considered to be a lot more un-realistic to the original Crash Mode and could also easily be considered less popular.

The soundtrack features a lot of Alternative Rock. It also include original sountracks from Burnouts 1, 2 and 3. These tracks were remixed so that they don’t loop and can act like a normal track in the playlist. However Burnout Paradise’s soundtrack is currently missing a track from Burnout 2: Point of Impact which originally played on Heartbreak Hills. Another great advantage of this game is you can play music stored on your PS3’s HDD. Go to Easy Drive > Sountrack > Custom > Select a playlist or track.

This game requires you to remember shortcuts and to have a good sense of navigation in order to win some of the later events. As well as there being shortcuts there are Billboards, Smashes and Super Jumps. You break or jump these with your car and they are all spread over Paradise City.

Unfortunately still there remain Burning Routes which are equivalent to time trials. Race around on your own to reach a destination at an impossible time. This aside the Road Rage events are by far the best and most active. Being able to battle anyway around the City un-guided and taking down your rivals.

Online gameplay has improved and plays at a good rate, there is virtually no lag. Online features Freeburn and Races along with the extension pack Cops ‘n’ Robbers. Unfortunately you can only choose between Freeburn and Race events online. Marked Man, Stunt Run and Road Rage have to be activated as a quick game while in Freeburn.

Overall this game is fun but make sure it’s for you. If you enjoyed earlier Burnout games there is a good chance you’ll enjoy playing this. But the variation isn’t as wide as you would expect from the size of a game that big. It has some dislikable features but if you take interest in the Racing Genre this can be incredible fun.