Paradise City never got so boring, so quick

 When EA Criterion announced that the Burnout franchise would make its way to an open world landscape, I simply shuddered. For the main reason why Burnout games were so fun was because Criterions crash mode was like a piece of Mozart, pure perfection. Slowly though the game developers have managed to take a slice of fun and risk out of the series in later offerings such as Dominator & Revenge. Both games had their strengths and weaknesses but the fact neither of them re-established the crash mode that Burnout 3 had was just an absolute sin.

I don’t know what happened in Burnout Paradise but from the off the game felt different, the cars felt heavier and slightly more cumbersome and the speed and sheer motion blur found in the last 3 iterations of the series just wasn’t emulated to the same degree that had you wetting your pants. More annoying this time round you’ll have to learn the roads, get lost, lose, learn the roads hope that the waypoint marker makes sense and then finally win. In fact the game must use the same navigation system as BMW uses it in it’s Sat Nav’s, it just sucks. What I’m trying to say here, is that you’ll have to invest a good period of time learning the roads in the game before you can confidently drift round corners and boosting for the chequered flag.

Not having crash mode but instead having it replaced by smashing gates, signs and discovering high jumps doesn’t really help either. If anything these little subtle extra’s in the game become mundane and never interesting enough to make you want to hunt them all down, they’ve also integrated these as elements of the online multiplayer, which is a complete bore. EA have tried to appease fans by adding in a Showtime mode but with none of the courses being pre-made, you have to work with what you have and in many accounts it lacks any real element of tactics or particularly any grandeur, it just feels tacked on.

There are two other flaws with Burnout Paradise also, firstly whomever made the game must have been developing it with a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses on, there is this over wash of blue and orange throughout the game during the day and that’s a shame, paradise city has character, so why not see it how it was meant to be seen, instead of behind some U.V filter. Secondly the way you activated objectives was annoying, stopping at traffic lights and pressing the RT button is fine at first, but once you start rinsing through the objectives your often hunting down new ones to do and more often than not they were the ones you have been putting off because they are either incredibly frustrating or incredibly dull.

I preferred the course driven world map of older Burnout titles the areas felt different and whilst Criterion have tried to meld in some of the area’s found in older Burnout titles you never feel like your in a truly different place. If the developers perhaps looked at how outrun changes its landscapes dramatically through tunnels it would be a better option, especially if we were talking vastly different landscapes, it visually would of looked like a David Attenborough wet dream. Now, I can’t sit here and bash this game continuously because it has some good pointers as well, I really like the fact that you can hunt cars down and add them to your collection. I really appreciate the love that Criterion has put into its community by offering free DLC such as motorbikes and started to expand into the more outlandish with its Big Surf Island, but however I’ve not had the chance to experience that yet, so I’ll keep an open mind. The play list in the game is one of the strongest I’ve come across and road rage still feels as good as it always was (and that was one of my favourite game modes)

Online the game doesn’t quite hold your attention long enough and because of the open landscape race system, small lobbies and needlessly complicated lap record junctions there just isn’t enough bite to come back to this game. There is fun to be had and given the price of the Ultimate Party version of the game it’s well worth picking up, just don’t expect something you’ll return to time and time again. It’ll give you around 20 hours worth of entertainment and then you’ll either look at buying additional DLC or just turn it off completely.