Best Future proof game, ever.
From the first moment you start the game you will notice that the game is entirely free roaming and you can go anywhere. This however creates a big flaw to the game since the franchise has been known for it's arcadey racing tracks. To start a race you'll have to go to one of the many intersections where you will have to hold the left and right triggers. Once a race has started you're let go, you will briefly see the finish area and you'll have to get ready for a confusing sprint where you'll have to open up your map several times.
There are no guide arrows what so ever to point you in the right direction. Instead you are leaded on the best road by the turn signals of your car or the street names that flash when you're nearing an intersection. If you fail a race and you stop your car and you'll go back to free roaming but you won't be back where you started meaning you'll have to drive back all the way to your last race's start point.
There are a lot of events in the game, ranging from a normal race, stunt runs, marked man to road rage races where you will have to reach a certain takedown amount. The speed in Burnout games has always been realistic, so realistic even that once you start going fast you'll get some kind of adrenaline rush.
If you ever played any of the past Burnout games then you know you'll encounter a lot of crashed or even inflict crashes by pushing an opponent into an oncoming car, slamming them into walls or simply by crashing into each other. The damage the cars get after a crash is sheer joy for the eyes, Burnout Paradise is one of the first game to allow the chassis of a car to bend after a collision.
There are plenty of cars to drive in Burnout Paradise and all of them have a different feel to them. The cars consist out of 3 classes, burnout cars, aggressive cars and stunt cars.
The game offers a great online experience that you access through the Easy Drive menu where you can do any of the offline races with your buddies online or you can even free roam the city. While you're doing that you might want to destroy some billboards, gates and take stunt jumps that are scattered all over the city to receive some awesome cars.
Burnout Paradise does not fail to deliver the same experience as you have come to expect from the Burnout games and it even expands it by adding the open world.
Criterion games have once more done an excellent job on creating yet an other Burnout. But they haven't stopped at that, they are releasing updates every few months to keep the game fresh.
Sometime during the summer of 2008 Criterion games will release a patch called Davis that will introduce bikes to the Burnout franchise and will once more keep the Burnout experience fresh.
