• Summary

• Reviews

• News
• Images
• Videos
• Downloads
• Hints & Cheats

By Keith B (3rd Apr 2008)

Criterion Games has crashed onto the scene once again with another car crunching classic. Burnout Paradise, the sixth game in the franchise, lives up to its name and has delivered another hit for the developer. Unlike the previous games, Burnout Paradise is a complete recreation of what we have all played in the past. In Paradise, numerous things have been changed from the previous games in the series, and one of the biggest changes you will notice when you start playing is the completely open world. The idea of having an open world gives the player the ability to go anywhere from the very beginning and roam every corner of the city. Although completely available from the start, the game area does have some restrictions.

Having an open world does not mean you can immediately participate in every aspect of the game. You must win races and collect cars in order to have your driver license upgraded to the next level. Winning races and upgrading your license also unlocks the over 70 vehicles in the game. The blazing vehicle speeds and epic crashes that we all know and love are still there and have been tuned for the better. There is one more downside to the open world design – you can’t jump to any event on your map, so that forces you to drive to each and every event. Another thing that is disappointing is there is no restart or retry after you lose a race or other event. In order to retry some events you have to drive clear across the map back to the starting point and this can get frustrating if you tend to lose races in the last few seconds.

While the basic gameplay has remained the same, many things have been changed from the rest of the series. Race mode is still around, but it has changed drastically. Instead of having one road to follow to the finish line, you must now burn your own path through the streets and shortcuts. Simple luck and skill alone won’t win races for you anymore. In addition to race mode, there are a few other types of racing – marked man is similar to a simple race, but you have to get to a finish line without being taken out by insane computer drivers. There is also stunt run, where you have to throw yourself off jumps and through billboards in order to rack up the highest score possible.

But probably the most missed of the mode types missing from Paradise is the incredibly entertaining Crash Mode. Criterion has one-upped this by adding a similar, player activated, Showtime Mode. In Showtime, players can now choose when to wreak havoc upon the city whenever they want without the constraints of predetermined traffic patterns and intersections. The addition of this mode has increased the puzzle aspect most people loved about crashing into mass amounts of cars and busses.

In addition to the numerous racing types, you have many different things you can do while exploring the expansive world. There are different challenges that you can work towards such as finding secret off-road passageways to get that extra edge during close races. Other than finding different routes to take, you can find one of fifty Super Jumps. These are opportunities to fly high above the city and do crazy triple barrel rolls. You also can seek out the Burnout billboards scattered throughout the area. Finding all of these items will unlock special cars that can be used in the game.

On top of all the things you can do offline, there is the multiplayer mode. Although there is no offline multiplayer to the game, Criterion has developed a great online component to make up for it. Going online from single player is a seamless process. Just click a few buttons and you are connected to the same game with as many as seven other players. The online mode allows for players to work with, or against, each other to complete different challenges or compete in a high speed race to the other side of the city. There are also online challenges that are similar to the offline mode and include others such as doing flat spins off the top of parking garages and jumping over boats at a naval shipyard.

A successful game also has to look spectacular, and in this aspect Criterion accomplished just that. From the very first loading screen you will notice the attention to detail that was put into this game from the design team. While in game, you will notice everything from reflections of the scenery on your car to the pieces of safety glass exploding from your vehicle after a crash. Everything about the vehicles and environment seems to have been designed down to the smallest detail you could want in a video game. But with all good, there is some bad. But in the case of this game, I can only name one thing that it lacked graphically. That one thing is the absence of weather and time. It would have been nice to have night races and have rain every now and then. But the amount of good things outweighs the bad from a graphical standpoint.
One thing the developers seemed to forget about until the last minute was the audio of the game. The massive soundtrack of 70 songs has some great music from various artists such as Guns N’ Roses, Alice in Chains, and Avril Lavigne. Criterion even created almost half the soundtrack themselves! Also, they have the EA Trax system in place so you can choose what songs you hear in the game which is great for a few of the songs. Aside from the soundtrack, the sound effects are very good for a racing style game. From the sound of different engines to the realistic crashes, all of the effects are produced very well and add quite a bit to the game play.

This game is a must buy for any gamer that is a fan of the Burnout franchise. Even if you have never played a Burnout game before, you will still enjoy this for the amazing playability and the sheer beauty of it. The re-playability of this game is phenomenal, especially with the consistently changing online component and the increased difficulty of challenges in the offline mode. The game is simply addicting, and other than a few things like not being able to retry a race, it is amazing and well worth the time to play. In the words of DJ Atomica, over and out.