Smash and crash your way to the top
Due to the amount of traffic on the road and my penchant for driving at high-speeds, I spent a lot of time early on crashing, often accidentally, into walls or other vehicles and then sitting back and being treated to the slow-motion sequences that occur each time you make a solid impact with something. These movie-like cinematics capture every dent, buckle and piece of glass that flies from your car in a perfectly slick way, but after an hour or so of crashing every now and again and being forced to watch the impact of my reckless driving, the novelty began to wear off and the replays started to irritate me slightly. Yes, I know a huge part of Burnout is the spectacular crashes and yes I do think that the cinematic slow-motion sequences do look fantastic, but whenever I knuckled down to get on with the point-to-point races I would have liked to have had an option to skip or fast-forward these crashes and just get on with the race.Nevertheless, I’ve yet to see one crash look that looks identical to another, so my frustration may well be another man’s joy.
These negative points can be forgiven, because almost everything else about Burnout Paradise is faultless. As I completed more and more of the events and began to work my way through the licenses (rankings), and as I got deeper into the game, I began to learn the map and know where I’d been and hadn’t been. It was only after some serious gameplay in the single player mode that the Paradise experience really started to open up for me and the playground became far more attractive.
As you do progress, the events get tougher, the AI get more aggressive and the challenge gets more intense, but also you begin to find the shortcuts around the city, and discover all the ramps that you can fly off and the billboards which you can smash through.
There are some superb touches in the game that add to the experience. During events you can hear the indicator ticking when you need to make a turn and then a quick glance to the top of the screen tells you whether you need to turn left or right. Although this may not seem a big deal, it does help to keep the action electric on the road because you don’t need to keep looking at the map in the corner of the screen to see where you’re going, you can concentrate fully on the road ahead.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageSomething special is going to happen at different stages for gamers whilst playing Burnout Paradise. Some people will immediate take to the free-roaming streets and be hooked from the outset at the possibilities that await them, whereas for others it’s going to take a little longer. But, rest assured, the time will eventually come when it all just clicks into place and you realise just how good a game it is. For me, this happened as soon as I stepped online.