Burnout Paradise

I have never been much of a racing game fan I usually find them repetative and quickly get bored. I therefore thought that Forza would do me for this generation but so much positive talk of Burnout Paradise pursuaded me to pick it up.

When you first put in Burnout Paradise you see all of its bad points and I mean every one. Your put in the middle of a big world with very little explained to you. DJ Automica the over the top radio host will explain everything to you but only after you have discovered it yourself which is a flaw although it does encourage you to explore. As soon as you enter a race you realise there is no invisible walls and the races can really be decided on how well you know your way round.

The thing that quickly changes your opinion of Paradise is all the little neuances that make all of these flaws manageable. You have a compass at the top of your screen during all races allowing you to get a general idea of which way to go which can really save your ass. The other thing is your indicators if you need to take a turning for the shortest route the appropriate indicator will click on and off to let you know.This combined with the fact that at first nothing is difficult to find and you quickly feel like a master of the city which incedentally is extremely good looking from the cars to the roads.

Now of course the thing that makes Burnout games different is the emphasis on crashing and this game does it better than anything else. Just driving around the the city and making a slight slip puts your car into slow motion and you see it crumble, twist and its just brilliant. Of course this quickly encourages you to drive as fast as you can into walls and the sort. Luckily Critereon Games realised this and put in the showtime mode which is the spiritual successor to the crash mode from the previous games. All you have to do is push the bumpers when you crash and you instantly enter a mode where you rack up cash for crashing into everything in site and its a nice little mode.

Burnout has a large amount of race modes and also encourages you to explore the city. Hidden all around are billboards and fences to smash and huge super jumps to land. At first these are everywhere but it quickly becomes a challenge to find them and reach billboards that seem to be in the middle of nowhere. This all leads to Burnout Paradise being fun for a very long time giving it replayability and stopping it from becoming another repetative driving game.

I want to explain every bit of Burnout Paradise but I could be here forever and you really should see it for yourself. After being plunged into a startlingly huge world you quickly begin to pick everything up and really enjoy the game. I now find it very easy to recommend Burnout Paradise to anyone it gives you hours of fun and challenge and deserves all the positive reviews.