Burnout Paradise Review

I am a huge fan of burnout, I have poured hours and hours of my time into previous installments of the franchise. Criterion has been making burnout for years and you can really see their experience of refreshing (if not renewing) the franchise.

Burnout Paradise is a great example a free-roam game, however people complain that you can't jump to events, but jumping to events keeps people from exploring the city and just plain makes the game boring. If you look at need for speed carbon for example, I beat the game in a day and I didn't even know where the starting garage was. This is because when the "jump to location" feature is incorporated it is just to tempting to use it, which causes a lack of want in the exploration area.

The city is molded for a free-roam genre to an almost perfect position, however their is a VERY steep learning curve when learning the routes of the city. So don't through your controller through the tv screen and call it quits straight away.

Now you are probably wondering why I put braindead computer AI in the cons box? well since I couldn't write my own con I put it there for the F***ing traffic cars which look like they are trying to take your soul. When you play the game at the start everything seems fine, but after some sort of mind f*** the traffic count explodes and what makes it better they will do one of three things.
1. Swerve into you (they want to take you with them)
2. Continue on the same path as they normally would.
3. Run into your already crashed car ... yes you heard me after you crash into one car others will go out of their way to extend the lengthy crash scenes (which at first look absolutely insanely OMGBBQ awesome).

Burnout Paradise has plenty of content, 120 events all scattered round the city, 120 builboards, 400 gates (Finding the last 1 is a real bitch), and 50 super jumps. This will keep you busy for at least 30-50 hours. I have played through burnout paradise 3 times (once for well first time through, second for a speedrun (21 hours) and the third time was to get trophies (never been a better time to buy paradise).

When you complete an event it is put forward to your license which is upgraded six times after the learners license. Each time there is an upgrade the events that you have completed are refreshed and you are required to complete more.

Now one big thing to mention is the awesome developers of criterion who are very in touch with the community due to their new forum. However there is more, they keep on developing FREE upgrades which so far have included more challenges and game modes, more cars and bikes. Next up is the "secret" pack and the island pack, which is really amazing seeing not many developers take the time to continue making content for their game at no cost.

I could go on and on about the online (multiplayer does have its flaws like the inevitable lag ... which makes takedowns hell).
I will rap this up and say, Paradise is a little different from previous burnouts, with crash being replaced with showtime, barrier guarded race tracks with go anywhere and make a lot of stupid mistakes gameplay ... But it is still completely and utterly what burnout stands for ... go fast, crash a lot and take people down with you!

*if you every get angry/frustrated from the evil traffic cars watch zero punctuation's review on burnout paradise*