Burnout Paradise

'Burnout Paradise' is the fifth entry in the successful racing/smash-em-up series and is probably the best yet, giving you full access to over 250 square miles of the beautiful Paradise City.

GAMEPLAY - 5/5
Instead of going through levels like on the previous Burnout games, the city is completely open so you can just drive about finding secret locations, or pull up to the traffic lights (and by holding the L2 and R2 buttons) you can take part in one of hundreds of challenges that include races, takedowns, marked man and burning laps. When crashing into another car, if you hold the L1 and R1 buttons it will start Showtime mode (which is basically the same as Crash mode) where you must cause as many crashes as possible to build up the cost meter. The best thing about Burnout Paradise is the online play through PSN where you can play against and with your friends in a series of multiplayer challenges, where there are over 350 to choose from.

GRAPHICS - 5/5
Some of the best so far on the PS3. Driving around the city is just so lifelike and if you have played the previous games you may recognise some of the sections from those games. It's just a shame that the games is so fast, as you miss out on looking at the gorgeous locations.

SOUND - 3/5
The engine noise and helpful tips from the DJ accompany a soundtrack that won;t be to everyone's taste (mainly rock songs). From the likes of Guns N Roses to NERD as well as all of the tracks from Burnouts 1 to 3. Once you have played this for about 5 or 6 hours though, the track loops will have you switching the sound off.

LIFESPAN - 4/5
You'll either love or hate the open city format. If you love it (which you most likely will if you take it online) the amount of hours you can play this is endless. As well as the 100s of challenged, you can create your own race types and invite your friends and the variety is unlimited. Offline however only has a limitied appeal as driving around the city on your own can get a little boring and you'll feel the lack of competition a bit underwhelming.

OVERALL - 4/5
Burnout Paradise is a good, fun game that moves at an incredible pace. There's plenty to unlock and the city is massive, so lots to explore. The online play works perfectly but as an offline game it gets dull fairly quickly and lets the game down, stopping me from giving it the full 5 out of 5 rating. Highly recommended for PSN players though.

The fifth installement of Burnout is placed in an open world environment named Paradise City. This new approach changes completely the concept created by the previous Burnout games, but is it for the better?

Definitely yes! Burnout Paradise revamps the notion of fun. Apart from the initial (and long) loading screen, there isn't one single load during the entire game. You can play the game from start till end without a stop in the action. When talking about next generation game enhancements, it's this kind of stuff gamers are expecting. Of course this change comes with a price, which is getting used to it. Having an entire city to explore with hundreds of events to run and hundreds of goals to achieve can be overwhelming at first but, as soon as you get the hang of it, you will never want to see another menu in your life. What do you prefer, spending a couple of minutes going through menus and loading screens or spending that time driving and having fun until you reach the next event? I would go for the fun.

Paradise City is packed with thing to do. You can race several cars in a race event. You can try to escape mad drivers in a marked man pursuit. You can perform crazy stunts in a stunt run. You can takedown other racers in a road rage. You can even prove yourself with a specific car in a burning route. All these are scattered around Paradise City. Almost each intersection has one, which allows you, most of the times, to start another event as soon as you finish one. Apart from it you have 400 shortcut passages to discover, 120 burnout billboards to destroy and 50 super jumps to try. Each street has one time to beat and one crash amount to achieve. As you progress the game, you unlock up till 75 different cars. As you can now imagine, the single player experience can take you hours and hours and hours of fun, adrenaline and, of course, incredible destruction - this is Burnout, dude!

This time around, and due to the open world without menus concept there is no restart button when you fail an event. This was one of the most criticized issues in Burnout Paradise and, yes, it could have been implemented, but this is really not a big problem. You don't need to try and retry for the same event if you don't want to, except in burning routes which can turn your frustration levels a bit up if you constantly fail and have to return to the same place to try it again. The only remarkable complaint I have is the crash mode now called showtime that comes with some changes in the gameplay. Although being fun as well, it doesn't really make us forget the thrills of crash mode, after touch and impact time from older installements. All in all, this issue is not enough to spoil the experience of playing Burnout Paradise.

Cars are now divided into three different categories. Speed cars are fast but aren't very strong on impact and can only boost when burnout meter is completely full. But, if you boost continuously, you get consecutive burnouts, this means that if done correctly, you can boost indefinitely. These cars are suitable for races. Aggression cars are heavy but very resistant which makes them a good choice for marked man and road rage events. Stunt cars are in-between the other two categories, great for stunt run events, billboard crashes and overall city exploration.

Going online is as simple as a couple of presses in the d-pad and you're again set to hundreds of goals to be achieved. The host player of the game has an incredible amount of events to challenge other players, and those challenges vary according to the number of players in a game from two to eight. For instance, he can order every player to join in the baseball stadium or he can order all the players to get a certain drift distance or a certain amount of barrel rolls. Races can also be set online. All this events establish a new way of cooperative gaming, or not. You can go online just for the fun of pursuing and annoying another gamers. Online play is a wonderful experience with no lag at all and a solid use of the Bluetooth headset for online chat and the eye camera to send snapshots when a takedown occurs.

Visually speaking, this game has still no rival in the race games. Paradise is a glamorous city with beautiful landscapes and areas including costal, mountain, harbours, airfields beaches and many, many more. Car models are brilliantly detailed. You can really see the city's landscape reflecting in the shining car metal. Everything comes at a 60 frames per second without a single drop down even when million things are happening at the same time. Popups can be experienced but won't spoil the gameplay. Actually, in a large amount of hours I spent within the game, I've only witnessed it once. Regarding the crashes, they are awesome. The car really deforms naturally when crashing against objects sending debris and car parts everywhere. Every crash is a stunning piece of visual art.

The sound effects matches the graphics but the soundtrack, although not bad at all for a racing game, could be a bit better. DJ Atomika had the worst reviews out there but, not being the best voice in a game, for sure it's not the most annoying and I kind enjoy him. But, if you don't, you can turn it off.

Summing all this, Burnout Paradise is a rock solid arcade racing game that will boost your adrenaline each and every second. Burnout fans should not get disappointed, and even if you do, you should give it some time because it will grow on you, and the game definitely deserves it. A must have title.

Takedown!

i agree with most of the positive things said about this game in everyone else's reviews... Expansive, Beautiful, Fast, Fun. There is loads to do, and you can just pick up and play it.

Admittedly my Uni's internet connection isn't compatible with my PS3, so I have no internet play (argh!) But some of my favourite bits of burnout were playing with my mate NEXT to me, taking them down and vice versa would be hilarious. I bought this game and assumed it had split screen multiplayer, but it doesn't, I want to play racing games (motorstorm) on my PS3 with my REAL (by real I mean present in the room) friends.... Why can't we do this? A major benefit of a console is multiple people on one tv, that's why you get onw instead of a gaming PC, right? Has anyone ever had more fun playing a game online then Mariokart or Golden-eye 4-player? Maybe it's just me, but I like to talk and interact with real people during a game (headsets do not count!) I am not enjoying this new trend to 1 player console games....