Post by Capton Tenacious on Jan 31, 2008 19:00:40 GMT -5
Burnout: Paradise Review
Recently, I purchased Burnout Paradise. First off, this game is unlike any game I have ever played. It has no actual main menu. When you start you instantly go to the junkyard screen where you pick your car.
Initially this game is extremely overwhelming when you start. You are dropped into Paradise City, which is 250 sq miles. Things to do include events, going through smashes which lead to shortcuts, super jumps, or crashing through the many billboards littered across Paradise.
There are 4 types of events. To actually participate in these events, drive up to a traffic light and hold right and left bumper to trigger it. Each stoplight has one of the four events on it. Race events have you race against 6 or 8 CPU cars to a select location in the city. Stunt runs have you trying to pull off as many stunts as you can in a set time limit. Road rage events are where you must take down a set number of CPU cars in a time limit, or if your car gets totaled.You can crash, but each car can withstand a different number of wrecks, and when that is up, you lose. The last is the marked man event, where you must drive as fast as you can to a set location without being totaled by CPU racers whose ultimate goal is to destroy you.
Let's talk about graphics, now. First of all, you will notice the graphics are amazing. The lighting in Paradise City is very, very good. Whenever you are taken down or wreck, the camera zooms in and slows down. You can see the small pieces of metal fly off the car and notice how the metal bends naturally around whatever object you unlucky happen to ram into.
Speaking of take downs, there is alot of them in Paradise. Whenever you take someone down, it throws the camera to face the unlucky car and you can see the carnage. But dont worry, when the camera shifts, your car drives on the same path and wont crash, until you regain control. There are many kinds of takedowns including, normal take downs, grinding take downs, car/van take downs, and my favorite kind, vertical take downs.
Last of all, ill tell you about the online capabilities. It's called freeburn online. There can be a total of 8 players. It is also a totally seamless experience. Anytime while playing you can simply press left on the d-pad to bring up your freeburn menu. From there, you can invite friends, create player and ranked matches and look at your challenges. While you are in freeburn the host can initiate races, road rage events, and the like. Also, you and the other players can try to beat challenges. There are a different set of 50 for each group of players.(2 players-8 players.)
Conclusion: Burnout: Paradise is a great game I would recommend to anyone who enjoys driving games. Even if you dont like them that much(like me) you will enjoy this. It has great gameplay, it's a seamless experience, and the graphics are gorgeous.
Graphics:9.0
Gameplay:9.5
Sound:8.5
Multiplayer:9.5
Performance:10
Overall: 9.3
+/-
+Extremely seamless experience
+Great controls
+Good graphics
-Announcer is very annoying
-Most of the music on the EA Trax list is bad
