Burnout Paradise's open world and the series signature racing make this a super driving experience which few match.
+ New open-world offers a ton of freedom
+ Exhilaratingly fast and engaging racing
+ Spectacular damage and crashes
+ Terrific visuals and detail really bring the city to life
Negative
- Scarce event variety brings a lot of repetition
- The AI is not as aggressive as it usually is
- Weird selection of classical music
The Burnout franchise is infamous for its fast-paced, heart pumping and over-the-top racing and crashes. Ever dynamic and exhilarating, Burnout Paradise is the seventh installment in Criterion Games' signature racing series and it is the first to connect the races of the game so mesmerizingly in a great open-world. Burnout Paradise offers everything you would expect from a Burnout game; spectacular crashes and damaged vehicles, action-packed races and a solid presentation to boot marking this one of the best installments in recent entries.
Welcome to Paradise City, the first ever Burnout to have an expansion open-world without restricting the player from either exploring the new world Criterion Games has developed or engaging in some of the game's events. Paradise City is populated by well-set unfinished bridges that allow dangerous stunts; plenty of private roads to smash into and 120 Burnout billboards to smash into, and a ton of roads and events to discover on the way, and even by just exploring the world is fun and satisfying. You need to travel every time to an event, even to return to the Junkyard to change your vehicle, but the world is not humongous, even if the whole free-roaming experience may feel overwhelming in the initial hour. As you are welcomed by DJ Atomica, you are thrown in the story-less (who needs a story in Burnout?) career of the Burnout Paradise, where your only aim is to rack enough wins to keep advancing classes in order to become a true Burnout driver. The exploration part of the city is rewarding. Finding Super Jumps, Smashes and Billboards are recorded, and events must be found to take part in. The main events are Races, the classic Road Rage, Marked Man, Stunt Run, and Burning Route. Despite this good variety of events, later in the game this really wears off. An excessive amount of track repetition and repetitive events drag the final few moments before attaining glory. The offline multiplayer experience consists of hotseat events up to eight players, but the menu design for this mode and the type of events are so underwhelming that clear shows the developer only wants to immense players in the online multiplayer experience. The online experience immerses you with a number of players online, using the same great open-world experience for seamless driving and connection.
The racing is as dynamic as in all previous installments. Fast and aggressive cars populate your junkyard, along with stunt and racing types. The main focus is still to ram your opponent against the wall, crash in spectacular fashion and awe at that detailed damage modeling and drive like a maniac. Due to the open-world, some Burnout laws have been changed. Races are open-ended, meaning there are no barriers leading to your destination, but the whole map is open for you to take any route to arrive, whether that is taking shortcuts or alternative routes than the AI. For better or worse, this can be both refreshing and frustrating as it requires some strategy never seen in the series. This forces heavy use of the mini-map and maybe even opening the whole world map menu. The mini-map is not entirely useful and that split-second distraction to look at the map can be closely, either missing a turn or right into a car.
Ramming your opponents against anything hard enough to smash them into is still satisfying but it is truly a shame that the AI takes quite a while to become aggressive. In the initial classes, the AI is so weak that the game is only challenging in Class A and beyond. The AI is nowhere near as aggressive as the praiseworthy AI of the superb Burnout Revenge making most Road Rage events a breeze, depending on the car you are using. The cars are divided in particular classes. Aggressive types take can sustain more damage than regular Speed or Stunt cars, making them ideal for Road Rage madness which takes place all over the map. Alternatively, Aggression-type vehicles are heavier and slower than the other types. A new event is the Marked Man event, which is a type of car survival event. In this event, struggle to survive to your destination against black, heavy cars that will ram you and demolish your vehicle in an attempt to stop. In both Road Rage and Marked Man, the event ends if you are totaled. Stunt Run gives you a limit of two minutes and a target score; go find a few ramps and a billboard to smash into to get the target score. These Stunt Runs are either incomprehensibly easy or irritatingly hard, depending on your knowledge of the area and your ability to take advantage of the environment. The last but not least are the Burning Route events, events restricted solely one each for one specific vehicle. These Burning Routes are the Burning Laps of previous installments, a time trial in an attempt to beat the time to get a mark on your license. The events basically repeat the same criteria, especially Stunt Run, which increases the target score and Road Rage, which increases the number of takedowns.
While the events are fun, the game overuses its destination. Each starting point is different but there are only eight destinations, landmarks of the city. Most of the time you would end up to the North Western part of the city, which is devoid of events, completely opposite to the Eastern side which is overflowing with different events and possibilities. Thus, you will be stuck traveling that much road to find an event, and furthermore you cannot immediately restart an event once it is ended, making it a frustrating trait of the game to go back and find it. You can exit an event by stopping your car for a few seconds though and restart the event by pressing the right directional button. Playing through events is the only way to advance through classes. Destroying and exploring is a mere enjoyable distraction. What shines is the damage and insane crashes. Violently hitting a traffic car from behind sends your ride flying, hit a brick wall and watch the car crushed against the unmovable wall in slow-motion. It is heart-breaking to see a beautiful ride get smashed to an unwatchable state, but this pain is a joy to Burnout fanatics. You will obtain new cars when advancing classes or watching out for randomly passing cars which the DJ advises are cruising in Paradise City, and after taking them down, they are yours. There are over 70 cars in all; even though half of them are improved models of vehicles you already own which are awarded by beating the vehicle's Burning Route. Different types of vehicles have different boast. Speed types can only unleash the boast all at once, and can perform Burnouts, while the rest can use the boast at any point, but cannot perform Burnouts. The Ultimate Box version contains Bikes, a counterpart of the vehicles. The Bikes have checkpoint events, serving like the Burning Routes, not-so-spectacular damage and no boost and these wins do not add to your current Burnout license achievements but are rather on their own. Other that the free-roaming offers the chance to beat every time on every single road, plus performing devastating show time that make you crash a wrecked vehicle in helpless traffic.
Visually, Burnout Paradise shines. The city looks alive, even having a day/night changing system, but the damaging modeling (although most of it feels exaggerated) is certainly impressive. Slow-motion crashes are capturing beautifully and sometimes dramatically, catching every inch of the destroyed ride. Some loading before you start driving can prolong some things, but there are no loadings as you cruise the city, and the wait is minimal from when you press the L2+R2 to start the event. DJ Atomica serves as your adviser, and while he can be a tad annoying, he serves the game well, giving you hints and talk about the city. The sound effects are as ever impressive, capturing the perfect nerve-wrecking crack of the crash. The audio presentation would have been something to match if it was not for the mixed bag soundtrack. The ever-so welcoming soundtrack 'Paradise City' by Guns N' Roses is really good, and so is most of the game's soundtrack, including some soundtrack from previous Burnout. This is all and good, except that there is a weird selection of classical music in this game; yes, even a Mozart piece. In a Road Rage event, I was haunted by truly unfitting classical music and kept pressing R1 to change the soundtrack in vain, because it kept switching to more classical music.
The lack of variety and limited event variety are the only things that really brings down Burnout Paradise at the end of the game, but persistent racing and Burnout fans will not let such little repetition hold a game that easily supports over 15 hours of gameplay offline. The experience online is broader and bigger than ever before but the offline multiplayer experience is quite crappy in comparison. Ultimately, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box is a superb open-world driving experience that nails just about everything you would expect from a first-rate racing series.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics = 8.8
An absolute looker, from the visuals, day/night system and the car models. Amazing crash modeling steal the show.
Sound = 8.7
The sound effects are a bomb, the DJ is pretty good in the end and while half of the soundtrack is great, the classic music part is unfitting for a game of this caliber.
Presentation = 8.4
Long loading to start playing, but the city features no loadings when driving. Menus can be a bit confusing at first, but everything is smooth. No particular technical oddities, especially when considering very high sense of speed and crashes.
Gameplay = 8.6
Burnout as its finest? Possibly. The racing is fantastic and the crashing is memorable, and the controls are brilliant to boot. Forcing you to travel to each event can induce a bit of repetition, but free-roaming is satisfying. Somehow, the AI is not as aggressive as it once was.
Game Events = 7.9
Plain variety of event types wears out at the end of the game and there really is not much to help you get further after obtaining your Burnout license. The event variety is where the game suffers. But driving to beat each road's time and showtime is quite a delight.
Recommendation Level = Very High
I have already played it on PC and extremely loved it, and the PS3 is just as enjoyable as the PC port. If you love intense driving experiences, Burnout Paradise is a must. If you love Burnout, you should already own it.
Level of Difficulty = Easy
This is not an especially challenging racer, particularly the Road Rage events. The AI is rather timid which ultimately softens the difficulty. It was only in later licenses that I could sense some might behind the AI, but never enough to bang my head against the wall in frustration. This is particularly a laughably easy game if a 13 year-old brother got almost 100% exactly a month.
OVERALL = 85 / 100
Burnout Paradise's open world and the series signature racing make this a super driving experience which few match.