Burnout Paradise Review PS3

The Burnout series has always been an excellent series that blended street racing with demolition derby, but with an emphasis on the crashes. Each iteration of Burnout has been entertaining, but repetitive and Burnout Paradise was supposedly going to change the franchise for the better. Burnout Paradise focuses on an open world setup where races occur in real time with multiple routes available to reach the finish line. The game is the first Burnout game to be featured on the next-generation systems Playstation 3 and XBOX 360. The game is also one of few to offer a lot of downloadable content for free as well as premium content for purchase, which has led to a long shelf life of online gameplay. Most games with online modes die off after a few months, but Burnout is still running strong after being released in January of 2008, as a result of the continuous stream of downloadable content.

Graphic and sound:

The graphics in Burnout Paradise are impressive. The large expansive open world has absolutely no lag when flying around the corners at top speed in single player mode or even when online with multiple opponents. Cars are beautifully detailed and deform fairly realistically when impact occurs with other cars or obstacles. The environment looks like a living breathing city with traffic and realistic architecture. The only thing missing is a human population roaming the streets, but then players would focus on hitting as many as possible. The sound effects are clear and the musical score contains songs from popular artists such as Guns N’ Roses.

Gameplay and controls:

The game has many of the same modes as previous versions in the Burnout series with one major exception, events are triggered in an open world environment at any time by the player instead of through menus as in previous versions. The player stops at a traffic light that offers an event and simultaneously presses the acceleration and brakes to initiate the event. Five game modes exist for vehicles and two exist exclusively for motorcycles. Race mode consists of racing against one or more vehicles, using and streets available to reach the destination and some include checkpoints that need to be passed. Road Rage consists of taking down a set number of vehicle targets before the timer runs out.  Stunt Run is a game mode that sets a target score that the player must achieve by performing stunts such as jumps, drifts, etc., before the timer runs out. Marked Man is a game mode in which a player is marked as a target and must reach the designated checkpoint while enemies are constantly trying to collide into and total the player vehicle. Burning Route consists of the player being assigned a specific vehicle to drive to a destination before the timer runs out. If the player wins, an upgraded version of the vehicle is unlocked. Burning Ride and Midnight Ride are the two motorcycle exclusive modes and are basically the same as the Burning Route mode except for being on motorcycles and Midnight Ride being at night. Camera views can be changed to behind the wheel, all the way up to varying degrees of chase cam. The controls are very similar to previous Burnout games and very easy to use. The game also provides a humorous online feature for those who have a Playstation Eye or XBOX Live Vision cameras. When a collision occurs, the camera will take a picture of the two players involved and send them to each other.

Overall thoughts:

I was not very fond of the open world environment at first because at times, navigating a race through multiple routes was very difficult to achieve with signs blurring past when boosting. After some time, I got used to it and loved the open world. Online play is a blast, especially if someone has a camera hooked up and you get to see their face when you collide into them. The game has many free and premium downloadable content that will extend gameplay beyond what comes in the box. This is a must have game for those who love the Burnout series and for those looking for a fun racing game that people still play online a year after release.