Burnout: Paradise

Let's hop right in, shall we?

The background:
Burnout: Paradise was released in 2008 for all major consoles/PC, and is one of many racing games with the Burnout title. It was published by EA, but put down your pitchforks, because it's actually alright. Burnout: Paradise is an open-world racing game, which is why it caught my interest - a racing game where you can just drive around, not having to race? I'm down for that, and for the price tag, it's actually a pretty good deal.

The plot:
The plot of Burnout: Paradise is as such: You are a rogue Transformer, driving around and racing other Transformers in the fictional Paradise City, sometime in the distant future when Transformers reign supreme over all of Earth. Now, the reason I say this, is because if you spin the camera around to the front of the car, you'll find that nobody is driving. And there are no pedestrians. Or anyone else. So what other explanation is there? Just get out and race, basically. The plot's pretty weak here.

The gameplay:
Like with DOOM, Burnout: Paradise's gameplay is what really makes it shine. It controls pretty well, with that arcade-y racing game feel. The vehicles move very quickly, as is standard in a racing game. There's a fair number of vehicles you can drive; however, there ARE vehicles that are obviously better than others, but it makes sense for there to be, as you win the ability to get these cars through racing. You don't win the car directly; when you win enough races, the car will begin to appear in the city, and it's up to you to destroy it in order to win it... as much sense as that makes. Each car falls into one of three classes based on the type of boost it uses: Speed, for speed (duh), Aggressive, for ramming other cars off the road and destroying them, and Stunt, for doing crazy tricks off of the hundreds of ramps set up around the city. There are collectibles, such as billboard signs you can destroy, and gates you can smash (400 in total!) which helps keep things from being really monotonous. The races themselves are usually not very difficult, but Burnout: Paradise tends to re-use race paths; for example, when you race from, say, north to south, you'll find another race at your destination that takes you south to north on the exact same route. It's little things like this that bother me in games, as it wouldn't be terribly hard for the developers to change the paths up a little bit. You CAN take your own way, but you'll likely end up losing the race, and I find that in the heat of the moment, it's hard to think about anything but following the route you're given.

In terms of audio/visual candy, the game looks and sounds pretty great. The graphics are fairly pretty, without being too over the top. The cars sound and look... well, like cars, as you'd expect. The music is a different story; it's your standard pop-rock-classical stuff that you get in every racing game. However, at least in the PS3 version, you can play music that you have saved on your hard drive, which is a huge plus from me, because the only other game I can think of that does that is LittleBigPlanet, and even in that game you can only listen to it in the stage select area and the level creator.

Length is hard to talk about in this game, as there's no set path to take to progress through the game. You can do the races and events in any order you want. Replayability is fairly decent; as mentioned, there are collectibles, and it's fun and mildly relaxing to just go for a drive from time to time.

However, even though the game is pretty good, there are a few complaints I have about it. Crashing is a major problem in a racing game, especially when you get going so fast and take a turn too hard. And when you crash in Burnout: Paradise, it makes sure you know. The game shows you your crash in slow motion, from multiple camera angles, and it takes about 30 seconds for it to finish... and when you're crashing quite a bit, this can get very annoying, very fast. It doesn't take much to trigger the slow motion effect, and the game feels the need to show you your crash every single time, without fail. It gets to be a problem after a while. The crash physics are fairly decent, and I feel like the developers are screaming "LOOK AT HOW GOOD OUR CRASH PHYSICS ARE!" whenever I'm forced to watch my car break into several pieces for the umpteenth time. There isn't a lot of local multiplayer options either; no head to head racing that I could find, just some half-assed "party games". Which sucks, because I'd really like to race against my friends whenever they come over, but apparently I'm not allowed to. Another major problem is the "EA curse", meaning that Burnout: Paradise has metric fucktons of on-disc DLC that you have to pay out the butt for. Nobody likes that, and it's a problem with this generation that needs to stop.

The verdict:
Burnout: Paradise gets a 3/5 stars from me. The game itself isn't bad, but there are definite problems that should have been addressed during playtesting. Who thought showing the player a 30 second crash sequence every time they crash was a good idea? And when are we going to see the end of on-disc DLC?

Considering the game's only $20 (I believe, it might be $30), I'd say pick it up if you like racing games, or just want a game where you can relax and drive. Otherwise, you could probably pass this game up.

Weiss out.