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Burnout Paradise Review (X360)

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Burnout Paradise Review (X360)EA
EA and Criterion have finally delivered the first true next-gen Burnout, and the results are pretty impressive for the most part. The game maintains the blazingly fast racing, slick visuals, and bone shattering crashes of the past, but adds in a few new bells and whistles to keep the series fresh. Not all of the changes were for the better, however, but even with a few lackluster race modes, Burnout Paradise is still an excellent racing game overall that is worth a look.
Quick Hits

  • Title: Burnout Paradise
  • Platform:Xbox 360
  • Publisher: EA
  • Developer: Criterion
  • ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
  • Genre: Racing
  • Pros: The races are fun; nice presentation; great online play; just driving around aimlessly is fun
  • Cons: Showtime mode is a poor replacement for Crash mode; Stunt and Marked Man events kind of suck

Features

The biggest difference between Paradise and past Burnout games is that you are now free to explore a large city. And rather than choosing races from a menu, events are scattered across the map at stoplights. Hidden around the city are jumps, billboards, and shortcuts you can crash through and all of these objects reward you with achievements when you find them all. Exploring the city is a lot of fun and is enjoyable all on its own.

Where Paradise starts to stumble is in the events you have to choose from. Races and Road Rage events return and they are fine. But the beloved Crash mode has been replaced with a new feature called “Showtime”. At any point you can press the LB+RB buttons to enter Showtime mode where your car blows up and you can bounce it along the road to try and hit civilian cars and try to rack up points. This is sort of interesting the first time, but it loses its luster very quickly. Another lackluster event type is the Stunt events. You have to jump and spin and boost and do other tricks to try to meet point goals. The problem is, though, that depending on what part of town you are in it can either be very difficult or very easy. And either way it just isn’t all that fun.

EA
One of the best features of Paradise is the seamless integration of online play. You can jump on or offline with the d-pad, and there isn’t any loading or any long waiting. Just a slight pause and, boom, you are racing around town with real people. It really is impressive and is a lot less intimidating than trying to play online in a lot of other games. The game performs amazingly smoothly online as well with very little lag.

Gameplay

The events are a bit hit-or-miss, but the gameplay in Burnout Paradise is pretty darn solid. The races and Road Rage events and everything else are a little different from previous games since there isn’t ever any assigned course and you are just trying to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible, but it still retains the same fast paced, accessible, and addictive feel from past Burnouts. It does take a bit of getting used to in order to learn the maps, but the game gives you a couple of visual and audio cues when you should be making a turn to keep on the right track, so it isn’t too bad. Paradise also does a good job of rewarding you with new cars at fairly quick intervals, so you always have new toys to play with.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Burnout Paradise is a very nice looking game. The framerate rarely, if ever (I hesitate to say “never”), hitches and the game overall is extremely fast and smooth and great looking. As always, the crashes look spectacular and the cars smash up very nicely.

The sound is a bit of a mixed bag. The crashes, engine sounds, and squealing tires all sound great, but the rest of the game isn’t so hot. The soundtrack features a couple of decent songs, but also a lot of tracks that seem out of place. Thankfully, you can use custom soundtracks on the Xbox 360 version. The announcer, DJ Atomica, will definitely rub some people the wrong way and tends to repeat things quite a bit, but I personally wasn’t ever too bothered by him.

Bottom Line

EA
All in all, Burnout Paradise is a welcome next step in a series that was in danger of becoming stale. I loved Revenge, don’t get me wrong, but another game that was just more of the same wouldn’t have really cut it. Thankfully, Criterion made the tough decision to make some pretty massive changes to the formula, and, for the most part, they have paid off. Some people won’t mesh with the open world design. Some events are weaker than others. But it is hard to deny that the overall pace and feel of the game is still very much the classic Burnout we love even if it is wrapped in an unfamiliar package. It isn’t perfect, but it is still absolutely worth playing. I would suggest renting it and basing a purchase decision on that rather than the demo, however. The demo doesn’t give you a ton of area to play in and there are only a couple of events so it doesn’t do a good job of showing off the more addictive and rewarding aspects that make the full game worth playing.

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