Review – Burnout Paradise
- Ethan Cole
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RUNDOWN
Drive around an open world city at high speed in 1 of 3 vehicle types, crash a lot and be annoyed by a mediocre soundtrack and the prick DJ playing them.
STORY
N/A
PRESENTATION/GRAPHICS
The menus are slick and stylized with the expected hip vector graphics of this era, in addition to this; they’re nicely animated. The interface: streamlined; clean, simple and easy to access; with the multiplayer options/menu mapped to the right/left D-pad.
Whilst the HUD isn’t too cluttered early on you’ll crash because you’re too busy referring to your min-map – either that, or some information will pop-up in the center of the screen temporarily obscuring obstacles. In addition to this the camera is still stuck right up the ass of the car – which is something that was annoying with the 360 edition of Burnout Revenge – more vertical space to see what’s coming up is warranted given the velocity, regardless of the fact the game relishes in crashes.
The washed out look and cinematic filters are an interesting addition, not necessarily a welcome one at the times of a crash but fits in with the new format of the game – which is not arcadey like previous titles. As this is a showy game the collisions show off the crash and crunch physics with a plethora of sparks.
GAMEPLAY
If you preferred Burnout Revenge to Burnout 3: Takedown chances are this is probably not the game for you. This is more like an open world version of Burnout 3 – without the proper ‘crash mode’ and a crappier soundtrack. This new step forward not only removes the party-game friendly ‘crash mode’ but no longer even marks competitor cars – either for revenge or out of competition – requiring the player to recognize them and take them down. They’re easy enough to identify as they’re the ones driving rides like yours, are trying to take you down, and also the only cars you can actually crash into – much like Burnout 3 you cant ‘traffic check’ as you would in Burnout Revenge which removes a fair amount of the fun and ‘traffic check’ takedowns. It’s still possible to ‘traffic check’-lite; more in the sense of a nose to tail peck on the cheek as opposed to a full on traffic checking vehicular tidal trashing.
The other problem that arises is this ‘world’ is designed to imitate a real city, and by that; it’s structured in a way that you have to find your own shortcuts and map your own routes through the city as you become familiar with it. However… unlike the real world or even GTA you can’t make use of the map – as there’s no feature to mark a destination point or have a newly unlocked car tagged for takedown. Regardless the stunt jumps and shortcuts are well placed with enough areas of open road for a full throttle burnout.
Additionally the cars seem heavier moving with more mass with a certain degree of realistic physics – which totally contradicts the new ‘showtime’ event (replacing ‘crash mode’) where the vehicle flies about like some spastic rubber ball. Another element removed is aftertouch; presumably because they wanted to make an open world multiplayer game which can also be played offline (and call it a single-player experience).
“Easy Drive”, the multiplayer mode accessed in game seamlessly with the D-pad; straightforward and easy to setup inviting from the friends list – with availability of modes dependent on the number of players. The addition of ‘mugshots’ are available for those with the web-cam styled peripheral attached – capturing a snapshot at the moment of takedown – half expected that in some cases you will find that the colours match the cups in the full moonlight.
The controls are tight and the handling varies slightly depending on the type of car selected. It’s with the vehicles that new gameplay strategies are brought to light; with cars geared for: speed, stunt, and aggression. The stunt cars for performing flat spins and barrel rolls – building a string of combos, where as the aggression cars are more suited for ‘marked man’ and ‘road rage’ events, as for speed there’s a new system introduced where the burnout meter is refilled pending your actions and can only be used when full, a continuous burnout is possible and makes a nice addition that prove useful in standard races.
AUDIO
The crash and collision sound effects are fantastic with a particularly nice touch of hearing the radio-audio from the cameras distance. The impacts, crunches and tires on asphalt are all solid augmenting the sense of speed and vehicular velocity.
Unfortunately the same cant be said for the soundtrack, which features the pussiest soft-rock EA TRAX to date (with the exception of the classic Criterion Tracks). However you can switch on/off the tracks you don’t want on the playlist… but the problem is that it’s almost everything – so a custom soundtrack is almost mandatory (360’s got the edge here).
To bring another comparison to GTA featuring “I Wanna Rock” – think again, this isn’t Vice City… even in tat instance that ‘sissy-soft-rock crap’ was more applicable in the sense of parody. But hey, this is a game for the cool casual gamer. Trust in DJ Atomika… not much needs to be said about this, as there’s almost enough general hate for him… almost. Thankfully he’s not the one giving the lowdown briefing when you first load up the game, for that you’ve got the same sounding chick from previous titles.
CONCLUSION
It almost seems they took a step back for this game, then took it in the ‘next gen’ concept of a proper-open-world since ‘the technology allows for it’ and so forth. Conceptually it’s a good idea, and whilst it’s a decent iteration of the game, the fact that classic gameplay modes and certain features aren’t available that made the series what it was, almost comes off like a slight against fans of the series to tap into this ‘casual gamer’ market (possibly only those who have friends online, never a face to face to fight over who’s player 1). Regardless, the game seems designed for short bursts of play, as such it’s best as a rental.
Rating: 7.2/10
Cumjackulation Rating: 9.0/10
(ratings explained)