I just got Burnout Paradise. I figured $30 for hours upon hours of open-ended free-roaming fast-paced mayhem wasn’t such a bad deal. Well, actually I just got it because my little cousin who comes over all the time was obsessed with the demo, but it turns out I ended up with a game full of metallic mayhem that just doesn’t end.
If you’re a fan of car games and don’t have Burnout Paradise, there’s not much to say other than: Get it now. If you’re like me and are generally not into racing games, and in fact have not even played a previous Burnout game before, then perhaps you’d like to read on and know why I highly recommend this game, and why the demo just doesn’t do it justice.
I’m going to steal Kotaku’s method of reviewing games. What they do is list their likes and dislikes, and then have a wrap-up at the end. Simple. I think it is a wonderful review style, because of the simplicty. You can quickly see the pros and cons, as seen by the reviewer, and then read which ones you feel like reading while skipping the ones you just don’t care about. Quick, easy, and to the point. :)
Liked:
- Crashing. This is probably the first thing you’ll notice and love when you play the game…unless you’re just way too good to crash (you won’t be!). The damage effects are extremely, extremely good. I understand this is something the Burnout series is known for. They’re really good at making a crash look and sound extremely chaotic and, honestly, satisfying. >:)
- Open-ended world. Driving around Paradise City, racing when I want, doing jumps and stunt runs when I want, or having city-wide demolition derbies when I want is just a great feeling. You are in control, you choose what to do and when. You choose how to do it and with what car. All without loading screens. Wonderful.
- Cars, cars, and more cars. There are a ton of cars to drive in this game, and the way you win them is very satisfying. You feel accomplished, you’ve earned something, without it being a major pain in the ass…usually. Criterion did a great job of giving this game accomplishments and progression without making it feel like work, but at the same time there are plenty of challenges for those who like it rough. And indeed it is that progression, and challenge should you take them on, that keeps you playing. You’ll also love the fact that each car has its own personality. They all handle different, perform different. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Yet you can switch and pick up a new car, a new driving style, very quickly.
- Seamless online play. Want to play online? All you do is press your right d-pad button and bring up a menu to the left of your screen. Then you select the type of online play you want and boom, you’re playing online with 7 other people. There’s no loading, nothing. You don’t even have to stop driving your car. Seriously. Not to mention that the online play is really fun. Sure it can be chaotic, but that’s what I feel this game is all about: Beautiful, Metallic Chaos. Problems arise when you get someone who doesn’t want to do one of the challenges (the game leader has initiated a derby in the baseball stadium, for instance), but that is easily taken care of by booting the bad apple. It isn’t a terribly social game. It is all about the chaos. The speed, jumps, flips, wrecking and style. That said, you will get some people on there who just won’t shut up. Like any online game, the experience can be ruined by 10 year olds…or immature 20 year olds. It’s easy enough to drop such groups of people and find new ones, though. And you’ll be glad to know there’s a mute feature. So you can put all the assholes on mute and smile. :)
- Polish. This game is polished. It looks great, sounds great, and runs great. The mechanics are solid, the controls are smooth. Everything works great. I love having no complaints about the controls and mechanics of a game.
Disliked:
- Crashing. A pro and a con. The crashes are beautiful and fun to watch, yes. But when you’re racing and all it takes is a light tap of another car for you to crash, it can get annoying. But you aren’t the only one subject to it. You’ll often see other cars, computer-controlled or other players, falling prey to the very same thing. One scrape at high speed and the next thing you know they are careening out of control and slamming into a row of parked cars. It’s great when it doesn’t happen to you. :) Also annoying is running straight into some large object, like a giant pillar in the middle of the road, because you were going so fast that you just didn’t see it. Drive slower and you lose. Drive fast and this will happen. It’s part of the wonderful mess that is racing in Paradise. Without these annoying things we wouldn’t have the wonderful ones.
- Open-ended world. Yup, this one is a pro and a con too. A blessing and a curse. But my complaint is small. The only time the open-ended world will get on your nerves is when you want to beat a certain challenge that you have to initiate at a certain intersection, a speed trial (called a “burning route”) for a certain car for instance. If you want to beat that challenge and want to do it now, but are having trouble doing so, you have to keep driving all the way back to the starting point. Sometimes this will be a long drive, just so you can try again at something you just failed. It becomes a walk of shame. It is a minor complaint because driving in Paradise City is always fun, but you may find yourself wishing you could just hit “retry” and watch a loading screen instead.
- Finding my way around. As a newbie to the game you will be lost. You won’t know where things are. It isn’t a huge inconvenience because you don’t really need to know where things are too much. You just drive around having fun. But when you do a race, it really helps your chances of winning if you know when a certain something is coming up, and just basically know how to get from one point to another. Otherwise you’re racing blind, relying on your car’s blinkers and flashing road signs at the top of your screen to know where to go. And those are just hints, sort of. They’ll get you there, but they aren’t necessarily the fastest way to go. You’ll wreck a lot while looking at the map in the corner to see when a turn you should take is coming up. That gets frustrating. The wrecks are vastly entertaining, but after a while you might wish you could just skip watching it and get back to racing.
- “DJ Atomica.” There’s a voice that comes over your “radio” while you’re driving, a dude called “DJ Atomica.” He can be entertaining and gives good general pointers every once in a while, but eventually, after hearing the same sound cilps several times, he can get annoying. There may be a way to turn him off… I’ll have to check. I still keep hearing new things from him, so he has a lot to say. It isn’t super-redundant. It just seems he repeats certain things much more often than others. Either way, it is fortunate that he doesn’t chime in too often after the initial “you’re a rookie, so listen up” parts.
Final Thoughts:
I own Gran Turismo A-Spec for the PS2. I found it to be dreadfully boring. It is obviously a good game; a gamer knows when a game is good even if they don’t like it. It just isn’t my thing. It is a racing simulation game. Burnout Paradise is anything but a racing simulation game. I wouldn’t even call it an arcade racing game. It is Burnout, and I think that’s the best way to describe it. It is in a category of its own. It is all about driving fast, doing insane jumps and stunts and wreaking havoc wherever and whenever you see fit. You can jump off a 10-story building, or higher, and your car will keep on going. Even with a fragile car. But run into a sedan at medium speed with a fragile car and you’re wrecked (no worries, your car is reset, fixed up, and back on the street already moving a few seconds later). So it is all about the speed, the jumps and stunts, and the crashes. It does this well. Very, very well.
Update: I’ve now put over 19 hours into the game. I said before that you don’t have to work for anything, that the cars and achievements just happen. While this is true for your first 5-10 hours in the game, you’ll be working for things after you get your “A” license. It can get frustrating replaying the same race over and over to try to get an upgrade to a car, but the satisfaction of finally completing it is well worth it. There’s a nice balance of difficulty and reward here. You have to strive for certain things, but it doesn’t kick you in the balls like, say, Ninja Gaiden. You get rewarded well for your hard work, if you can even call it that. It usually doesn’t feel like work, just “hard play.” The main obstacle in this game is how fast it is. You’ll crash a lot because of this, as there’s plenty in the streets for you to run into. Find peace with that, and nothing in this game will bother you! ^.^
*I have the PS3 version of the game. It is said that the 360 and PS3 versions are identical in content, functionality, and polish.
