A Great Game For Any Gamer!
If you have played the demo for Burnout Paradise then you pretty much played the retail game. The demo was just a small portion of what is offered in the full game. It has bunch of events, that are quite entertaining to complete. The city is extremely large and quite scenic to drive around in. The AI for the other cars is quite a bit better as well. They actually put up a fair bit of fight compared to the other AI in the rest of the Burnout series.
Controls:
The controls feel just like any other Burnout game. Tight controls keep this game accessible to gamers who aren't necessarily that great at racing games. It also makes the game playable at the high speeds you’re going at throughout the whole game. One thing they added was the ability to use a hand break. The hand break is useful for doing quick U-turns or when you come to a quick turn a little to fast. Drifting is still what you will be using most of the time to turn. Just like in the other Burnouts, you just tap the break (Left Trigger) to initiate a drift. Like I said before, if you have played any of the previous installments in the Burnout series, then none of the controls should feel new to you.
Gameplay:
The gameplay in Burnout is on par with the rest of the series. It is Boost filled, chaotic, and full of constant Mach 1 speeds. The game now has adopted open world gameplay. The open world aspect of the game actually fits in quite well. Its not the first time its been done in a racing game, but Criterion managed to fine tune it to such an extent that the game comes out looking flawless. There are quite a few events in the game; all of them can be accessed by pulling up to the designated intersection and skidding your tires (Hold Left Trigger and the Right Trigger at the same time). The Cars in Burnout are all organized into different classes. There are stunt cars which are just an overall good car for racing and doing stunts suck as jumps and drifting; the stunt cars are what would resemble the old cars from previous burnout games. The aggressive cars are a little bit heavier and are better for road rage events, they are a little harder to control and take a little while to accelerate, they also have half the boost you normally have in the other cars. The Speed class cars are built for constant boosting. They let you chain together constant boost chains called Burnouts. The down side to the speed class is that you have to have a full boost meter to use boost. If you let go of boost after you used it once. You have to build it up all the way back to the top to use it again. If you use it constantly and drain your boost meter fully without letting go of the boost button, then you get a full boost bar again. The way you unlock new cars if by either finding them throughout the city and taking them down so you can go claim their car from the junk yard, or you get a car from upgrading your license.
Game Types:
The game types are also a lot of fun. Some complain how crash mode isn't there anymore; I however enjoy the new showtime mode, which lets you crash your car at anytime by pushing the left and right bumper at the same time. This will cause your car to start flipping and you can control your car for as long as you have boost. You gain boost by hitting other cars anywhere. You have to use boost to keep on flipping though; so every time you hit the ground you basically have to tap the A button to bounce again. The Race mode is self explanatory. The Road Rage events are back and are the same as before except now instead of around 3 cars on the screen at once, you will see anywhere from 4 - 6. They also have 2 new events called stunt, and marked man. In stunt you do as many stunts as you can in a time limit, all while trying to link them together to get a combo going. The stunts vary from getting air to doing flat spins. Anything that gets you points will keep your combo going. As far as I have gotten in the game, the requirements that you have to reach in points for the stunt events seem to be quite low. I can easily get over 100,000 points in one giant chain; but the requirement to pass the challenge is only 20,000. The other new gametype is Marked Man. Where you have to drive from point A to point B without totalling your car. There are usually 2 cars that are constantly trying to make you crash. They are quite aggressive compared to the other AI in the game, so they do give you a run for your money. The main problem that lots of people have with the game is that you can't restart events. If you fail a mission you have to go all the way back to the intersection that you started the event at. So when you start beating most of the events and you have less and less to do. It requires more and more driving just to start the events.
Graphics:
The graphics are quite good for a game that has very few load screens. The cars look great when they are all dinged up and falling apart. The scenery looks great as well. Not much else to be said in this section besides that the graphics look top notch.
Conclusion:
The game seems to fit together quite well. There are a variety of different events for you to do throughout the game, and the online adds an assortment of different things to do with your friends. For the fun you will have with this game I would recommend everyone who hasn’t already tried the game to go a download the demo off of market place, or better yet go and rent it.
