Burnout Paradise Review from GamePro

Review

Get Your Motor Running: The Next Burnout Truly Is Paradise

By Chris Morell
January 25, 2008 11:35 AM PST
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Think the rush of triple-A titles is over? Think again: Burnout Paradise is a bona fide winner and it just might be the best action racing game ever created!

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Welcome To Paradise

PROS:

The open-ended world offers up a lot of possibilities.
The crashes, a series hallmark, are just as impressive as they were in past installments.
The sensation of speed is ridiculous. You better have nerves of steel if you want to survive this ride.
The transition to online play is transparent and seamless, which is a really nice touch.

CONS:

Just like in real life, navigating through the huge city can be intimidating.
The learning curve is far steeper this time around. You will spend some time getting acclimated to the game.
An instantaneous "restart" option would have definitely come in handy.

There is no denying the allure of the Burnout series. Like a souped up racing car, the Burnout games have always been about three things: speed, speed and more speed. Putting the virtual pedal to the metal in Burnout was as close as we were going to get to becoming a daredevil street racer, and it let us do it without the fear of reprisal from the authorities and the risk of ending our lives in a fiery automotive crash.

For pure racing action, there was no other franchise that delivered on all counts. From the slick engine to the awesome damage modeling and physics to the nose-bleed inducing sensation of virtual speed, Burnout had it all.

And just when we thought the bar couldn't be pushed any higher, along comes the best Burnout yet: the aptly named Paradise. With its open-ended world and it's go anywhere/do anything philosophy, Paradise shines with a beautiful new-gen sheen. It's everything you would expect from lauded developer Criterion.

Senior Editor Chris Morell was lucky enough to pull on his driving gloves and slip behind the wheel of this ultra slick racer to so click through to the next page to read his impressions and to see why Paradise is an action racing fan's dream come true.

We'll see you out on the open road.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Chris Morell played both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions and found no discernible differences in gameplay, so the scores and review stands for both versions. We are going to investigate if there are any differences in terms of framerates and visual quality and will report back if we find anything.