Burnout: Paradise - Review

Added February 11th, 2008 by Artie Augustyn

Since the original release back in 2001, the Burnout franchise has made quite a name for itself. With its addictive arcade style gameplay and illustrious crash mode it’s obvious why this series has become so popular. Now seven years later we have Burnout Paradise. Compared to previous installments, it’s clearly an ambitious game due to the decision to depart from the traditional menu-based style of play and adopt the idea of an open-world. Fans of the series worried that this format change would affect their love for the game, but put those worries to rest. This is still the Burnout we all know and love, adding another great game in the already fantastic series.

So what’s up with that open-world idea? How does it work? Right from the start you are able to explore every bit of Paradise City. You can do whatever you want: cruise the sights, explore some shortcuts, find a few jumps and barrel roll ramps, or if you want to get into the thick of it you can start any of the 120 events in the game. Each event begins at a traffic light within the game. While you’re cruising around pull up to a light and hold the accelerator and brake for a few seconds; the event initiates with no load time to wait through or menu to navigate around. The system is very seamless.

There are five events in the game: Race, Burning Route, Stunt Run, Marked Man and Road Rage. Race is what it sounds like, a race; the difference in this installment is that because of the open-world you can reach your destination however you want. You can choose to follow the other racers, venture on your own and hope you find your war, or you can explore prior to the race and attempt to find some shortcuts. While this may feel overwhelming at first, you discover pretty quickly that you can just go with the flow and you’ll end up reaching your destination pretty easily during the first few hours of the game. As you progress further into the game, the racer AI ramps up, so you’ll really have to learn where you’re going. It also helps that there’s only eight finish lines in the game, one for each compass direction. The race can start wherever you want, but they’ll always end in one of the eight locations making it much easer to remember what paths are fastest for which finish line. This new take on the racing genre really makes the game feel like a breath of fresh air when compared to competitors who have been re-using the same style of play for the past few years.

Burning Route is similar to race. You’re required to use a specific car and then race across town in a limited amount of time. In Stunt Run you try to find as many jumps as possible and catch some big air, while attempting to do barrel rolls, flat spins, drifts, boosts, and driving backwards. For each trick you perform you acquire a certain number of points, doing a large amount of tricks in a row starts a combo meter, increasing your score. If you obtain enough points at the end of the timer, you pass the event. The problem with these two events is that they rely a little too much on memorization of locations and routes. You’ll probably avoid these types of events until you’re forced to complete them near the end of the game, once you've become accustomed with your surroundings.

The Marked Man event puts you in a situation where you have to race across the city at whatever speed you want, there’s no time limit. However there are three other cars that attempt to send your car scintillating against the barriers, eventually causing your car to fulminate. If you crash too many times, you fail the event. Road Rage is related to Marked Man, instead of trying to reach a destination, you’re trying to obliterate other cars. Again, if you wreck too many times you fail the event. You can make use of repair shops found around the map to restore your car to its best condition in an attempt to increase your chance of survival. These events offer the largest amount of fun to be had, since they both combine the great sense of speed the game has, and the beautiful crashing mechanic.

Although Road Rage offers a lot of car Armageddon that’s all you’ll get when it comes to vehicular mayhem. The crash mode that’s been highly praised in previous installments doesn’t make an appearance in Paradise. Instead the crash mode is replaced with “Showtime” which is triggered by holding LB and RB at the same time. In Showtime mode your car launches itself into the air. From there you try to navigate your car into busy traffic causing as much destruction as possible. This mode provides a lot of small-scale destruction, there are no large explosions or catastrophic events that you can create, so your urge for catastrophe is never really filled. One of the greatest parts of Crash mode was the puzzle nature of it, and Showtime mode doesn’t offer anything like that. It doesn’t require much skill, it isn’t very fun, and it seems like Criterion Games knew this. There’s no mentioning of Showtime mode anywhere in the game, you can actually play the entire game without knowing it existed, but that’s a good thing, because it’s obviously the weakest part of the game.

The cars of Paradise also make a noteworthy change from preceding games. As an alternative of cars simply having different stats such as speed, boost, and strength, they’re also put into categories of “Class” now. The three classes are Aggressive, Speed, and Stunt. Aggressive is made for events such as Road Rage or Marked Man. These cars have a lot of potency so they can survive more crashes, but they’re also slower and more difficult to control. Speed class cars are weaker cars, but they have a lot of boost power. Boost on speed cars works differently from the other two classes. Instead of pressing boost whenever you want, you have to wait until your bar is entirely full, and then use all of it at once. This limits the maneuverability of speed cars since they’re unable to supply small amounts of boost when going around turns. Finally the stunt class car is sort of a mix of the two other classes. The stunt class is obviously the most useful one of them all. It's fast, has a normal type of boost, and can also survive a good amount of damage before crashing. While the attempt to make new ways of playing the game is a good gesture, it doesn’t really work very well in practice.

After you’re finished fooling around in single player you can take the experience online. Just like the rest of the game, there are no real menus required to go online. All you have to do is press right on the D-Pad and search for a game. After a second or two you’ll be exactly where you were before, but now other players are in there with you. While online you can mess around with friends or attempt to finish all 350 challenges that are accessible to you. The challenges start off effortless with very simple and straightforward goals such as boosting for 10 seconds, but as you get further down the list and more players join the game, you get to challenges like jumping over three other players while doing a barrel roll. Although these challenges are fun, other events from single player like Marked Man and Road Rage are absent from the online gameplay. It’s rather disappointing since these game types seem to be made specifically for human interaction type gameplay as opposed to only competing against the computer AI.

On the technical side of things Burnout Paradise is a shining gem. Not only does the entire city look gorgeous but the game consistently runs at 60 frames per second. No matter how much destruction is caught on screen the frame rate never dips, it’s smooth the entire time you play. The soundtrack on the other hand isn’t as noteworthy. It’s not bad by any means but it seems kind of bizarre to have Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” in a game about crashing cars. There is a decent size of variety in the soundtrack, and there’s also a few original tracks made for Burnout Paradise that serve there purpose as background music well.

Along with the soundtrack is DJ Atomica, a radio DJ for “Crash FM.” DJ Atomica places himself rather high on the list of “Annoying announcers that won’t shut up.” You’ll constantly hear his “words of wisdom” throughout the entire game. If you lose an event, win an event, wreck really bad, or even if you’re just driving around he’ll chime in with some pointless comment. There is a way to turn off the random comments, but you’ll still hear him at the start and end of events.

So if you’re a skeptical Burnout fan, there’s nothing to fear. Burnout Paradise is another great edition in an already fantastic series. The few minor problems the game has are easily overcome by the fact that everything else is so polished and well done. Paradise makes a step in the right direction by moving to a more flexible setup than previous games, but choices such as replacing crash mode, and lacking any real variety in the events themselves keeps the game from being the best in the series. However if you’re looking for a great racing game, there’s no doubt this is the perfect choice for you.