Burnout Paradise (PS3)

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Customer reviews

review by: fox2125 date: 2008-05-25 rating:
Burnout Heaven with a liitle bit of Hell missing
I've been a master of all the series so far and have marvelled at the quality that each offering made to take it to the next level. Paradise is an interesting offering for next gen consoles. Open city (GTA style) and open levels. You decide at any given moment whether you complete races, stunts and takedowns. In between it allows for collecting items around the city including jumps, sign destruction and shortcuts. The only reason this didn't get five stars was the lack of crash mode. Criterion have substitued this with a 'Showdown' mode. You drive fast, hit two buttons and try and crash into anything that moves for points. I would have prefered the old style levels where you knew what you had to try and hit to complete the level. It would of also looked awesome with the graphics this title possesses. Online mode for me is a bit hit and miss. Sometimes too many things to aim for can make the gameplay a bit messy. If you're a fan, buy it. If you like GT, then this isn't for you.

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review by: Danny date: 2008-05-23 rating:
Burnout Paradise
The idea of a free roaming racing game seemed inevitable what with the success of grand theft auto and other similar titles. Burnout, known for its high speed city racing and cringe-inducing crashes, was a good place to start. Burnout Paradise - the 5th instalment of the Burnout series - is absolutely brilliant.

Paradise city is your open world in which to wreak havoc. The massive city is separated into a number of different areas, each varying from built up streets to open mountainous roads. You move throughout these areas seamlessly, with no loading screens or menus, which is quite an achievement, considering that everything looks magnificent.
Aside from the detail on the traffic, everything is polished to digital perfection. The cars gleam elegantly, the background is atmospheric and inspiring... and the crashes are superb.

Before I talk about crashes though, here are some details on how the game actually plays. You start with one car and are let loose into the city. From the off, every single inch is reachable; no invisible walls or unlockable areas. You then make your way around the city, and at pretty much every junction there's an event, you simply pull up and hold R2 + L2 and you're taken into it. Straight into it. No Loading. The events include races, stunt runs, time trials, crashing into people and avoiding crashes. By finishing these events you upgrade your licence and unlock new, awesome cars. It's a simple enough system, and thanks to the genius flow between free driving and taking part in events, it works brilliantly. You always feel like you're working towards unlocking something.

So what is there to unlock? Cars, of course. 75 in all, and its surprising how different each model is to drive. For example, the Hunter Vegas is a very fast stunt car that handles corners terribly, whereas the Krieger Pioneer feels extremely heavy to drive but takes corners very well. The cars are also customizable, though this isn't really an in-depth system that allows you to change your cars stats, just a simple changing of paint jobs.

Aside from the open world, the other factor that takes Burnout above other racing games are the crashes. Whether it be seeing someone you're racing with suddenly smash into something and fly off into the background, or if you're having your own crash, they're amazing. Speaking of the latter, the effect it awesome, with all the music stopping and the only sound being the very detailed crunch of your car turning into a cube, spinning through the air in slow motion.
Crashes happen often, what with the fact that things start to get really fast, and just looking down at your mini-map for a second can easily lose you a race. This, in a way, is one of the games weak points, in that it gets extremely frustrating trying to see where you're going when you're going so fast, and it's best to just hope you're heading in the right direction or follow other cars (there are no markers - it's an open world after all). But then again, that's just the kind of racing this is, and it means you have to put hours in to get to know Paradise City, which in time you most certainly will.

One final way Burnout has revolutionized racing games is with its online play. Once again, no lobby's or loading screens, you just say you want to go online, and before you know it a bunch of people pop-up on your map. It's something new, and definitely something that will be used in games from this point onwards. Racing with friends allows you to complete online only challenges, as of which there are over 300. These range from racing to seeing how many cars you can barrel roll over... great fun!

In presentation, the game is very similar to EA's skate. The stats screen is detailed and let's you see how much of everything you've done, which is great for people who want to finish it all.

So what's wrong with this game? Not much at all. When you lose a race you carry on from exactly where it ended, making restarting it a pain, but there are so many other races on the way back you'll be tempted to start another. Perhaps a more in depth car customization would have been good for car enthusiasts, but it doesn't really feel like the game is missing out on much.
There's so much that will keep you playing this game, from breaking through all the billboards to the excellent multiplayer. This is a racing game like no other, and deserves to be bought.

9.5

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review by: date: 2008-04-06 rating:
Hugely accomplished and awesome fun
For me Burnout Paradise rocks on pretty much every level.

I've clocked some 30-odd hours of gameplay so have seen a lot of what the game has to offer and I've still lots to see.

I guess there are two main parts, the offline singleplayer nad the online game. The singleplayer game revolves around completing challenges dotted around the city at the many sets of lights and intersections to gain new higher grade licenses. The main motivation though is gaining new cars as you complete a certain number of challenges. These newer and mostly better cars can then be used in the online game.

Anyone familiar with burnout should feel right at home. The game has been expanded and the city itself is HUGE - it'll take tens of hours to learn it and all the shortcuts needed to give you the advantage. The map is very useful showing where all the events are and what type they are (road-rage, race, stunt run, marked man, burning route). What it doesn't show you are any shortcuts unless you look closely...

The variety of gameplay on offer is vast. If you like racing there's loads of races and if you like carnage there are the road rage events and showtime modes. SHowtime can actually be started anytime and lets you crash into cars whilst you try to acculmulate the highest cash damage bonus.

A simple press on the D-pad is all you need to access the multiplayer online menu. From there you can invite friends, start a game, arrange races or events - it's a really great system. If you want to end the game you can and the game just drops you seamlessly back into single player mode.

The graphics are cool and the crashes are amazing. I still have not got bored of seeing cars being smashed up and in particularly high speed crashes the game goes into slow-motion - awesome.

The range of cars is large and they are generally won b shutting them down. This means that on completing a certain number of events a car will begin roaming the city and if you smash it up its yours. This is a great part of the game and it's great fun coming across the new cars and chasing them down. On winning a certain model you can then go hunting for its relevant 'burning route' which is a time trial for you to beat to win a slightly modded version of the car you used.

The soundtrack to the game is superb too - 40 songs by artsist like Jane's Addiction, The Pigeon Detectives, Gun's n Roses, Faith no More...plus 30 tracks from other burnout games. If you leave the game paused it will play a seemingly endless number of well known classical pieces too, even though that's hardly what you bought it for!

I think the game succeeds so well by the sheer level of freedom it gives. Even if you're not doing an event you still may come across a car you have not shut down or you can go searching for the 50 super jumps in the game or the shortcuts or just generally go around causing carnage. Then there's the whole road rules part...

The cars themselves display a large degree of handling characteristics and are grouped into 3 types: speed, stunt and aggression. Speed cars are fast and light and generally a small shunt will put themout of action. ALso their boost meter has to be full to engage boost. However, if you use all the boost in one go your meter gets about a 85% refill so you can quickly fill it with a manouvre and boost again almost indefinitely until you prang yourself. Stunt cars are the good allrounders, there are some fast models which are quite strong and you can boost whenever you want as long as you have some boost. Aggression cars are generally very strong and hard to steer but great for the road rage events as most other cars can be smashed up with barely a flick of the stick.

The sense of speed conveyed by the game is frighteningly good and very exhilarating - especially on a big screen. I've never seen anything like it.

There's so much in here I've probably missed a lot.

This is without a doubt one of the finest games on PS3 at moment and possibly up there in my all time top 5 games. I love my first person shooters but Call of Duty 4 which I bought at the same time hasn't had a look in since I got this. I know it won't be to everyone's taste as it's an arcade game - if you're wanting a GT clone look elsewhere. However, if you want all out fun, something with a pumping soundtrack, huge gamplay, online modes, awesome graphics and mental challenges get this without delay!!

Mega!

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review by: date: 2008-04-05 rating:
From a racing game player
Have played this game to death. Have the Elite licence. Done the Paradise Awards. Unlocked all 77 cars. If you like fast car driving this is it. Lots of reviews here of people who havent played the game. Because you can stop a race by staying still for 5 secs there really is no problem about restarting a race. Online is unbelievable & getting a pic of people you takedown is really enjoyable.

Best game I have ever owned. The Criterion guys ROCK! Listen to their podcast too. Lots of helpful hints & very funny.


review by: date: 2008-03-27 rating:
VERY GOOD BUT JUST SHORT OF GREAT
burnout paradise is well worth buying but i would recommend you buy it preowned as i dont know anyone who hasnt got fed up with it in one way or another.
it has all the right ingredients like great graphics,crashes,sense of speed but throws them all into the wrong pot and that pot is paradise city.
you see the city is so dense and samey looking that many of the challenges see you whizzing past turnings that you try so hard to memorise but cant as there are so many of them.gone are the huge arrows that helped you tear along in the right direction in place of a tiny map in the corner that is too hard to see properly when racing even on my 46 inch hd tv.they have added indicators at the top of the screen but they are too high up as you concentrate on the centre of the screen and concentrate you must at the insane speed you are travelling,try not to lose your temper as at the last corner you miss the turn and end up in second place instead of first!! this never happened to me in the previous games.
the game is quite short also i completeted it in appx 8 hours and online play can get really repetitive also.still worth your money and will keep you occupied for a while.

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Accessories

Hori Arcade Fighting Stick (PS3)
4Gamers Controller Charging Dock (PS3)
Madcatz HD Component Cable (PS3)
Joytech HDMI Tri-Link Switcher (PS3)
4Gamers HDMI Cable V1.3 (PS3)

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