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a nice drive

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After growing up with video games I've been away from the world for a little while, and so come at this game with both a tad of experience but with a whole lot of wonder about how far games have come. I've not played any of the previous versions of Burnout, and am not hypercritical about which features I "need" or might be missed. I'm just a guy who wanted to relax a bit with a game. Games aren't my life. They are a temporary diversion on occasional free moments.

Maybe that's why I like Burnout Paradise so much. It makes so few demands. It doesn't require a long period of orientation. There's no major storyline to envelop me. It's just driving. Driving however and wherever I want.

The controls are easy to pick up. I got a feel for it within moments and for a while enjoyed just cruising, enjoying the very realistic and expansive sights.

Then I started to notice what the game itself had to offer as a game. A few different kinds of races. There is the take out, in which the goal is to knock opponents out of action during a set amount of time. There's the standard race: get from point A to point B before your five opponents, taken any route you want. The first time I tried I got behind, then made a wrong turn, got separated from the pack and just kept driving. I was laughing how I wasn't in this for the win, when all of a sudden the pack came off to my side, and I found myself in the first position. I inadvertently had found a shortcut. Went my own way and won.

The other kind of race pits you against two crash cars who are trying to take you out. The goal is to make it to the finish line without being totaled.

And for those Jackass moments you can crash, scoring in this mode for how long you can keep your crashing car bouncing from one car to another, increasing your cash value of destruction.

Along the way you can pick up new kinds of cars, though none are 'real' licensed cars they do reflect familiar models. You can get new paint jobs and otherwise find the occasional treat. Races are easy to find. There's one at every stoplight. Meaning you can sit and do what you want without following a script or otherwise being forced to progress as the game demands. This makes Burnout Paradise a fun, visually amazing, game that makes for a great, long lasting, distraction.

It's not one of those games you can get lost in, that is amazing in its constant complexity and strategy. It's a driving game, and a driving game that really frees you to just drive.

Definitely worth getting.

250 miles of realistic heart pumping fun in Paradise City

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm not a big video game player. I don't care for Halo type games or ogres running around. But, I was very excited to be able to try out Burnout Paradise as I've always been a fan of racing. Unlike several other racing games, Burnout Paradise has approximately 250 miles of open road set in beautiful Paradise City (Hollywood).

This newest burnout game did away with crash mode and replaced it with Showtime mode, which allows the car to continue to crash all the way across the map if you'd like. Each time you hit a car you get a boost and the crash gets more spectacular.

The map is sometimes difficult to follow, and if you make a mistake you have to find your way around on your own. You can't just restart from where you were. I think this is nice because it's more realistic and challenging. Overall, you can unlock about 75 cars in this game. So far I have only a handful and they do handle and sound different from each other.

The music is standard fun rock, and I haven't found any curse words or sexualized images, which makes the game fairly appropriate for kids unless you are opposed to them crashing cars and developing road rage.

It's also fairly fun to crash through fences and drive through areas cars would not normally be able to drive such as train tracks, tunnels, and parking garages. Did I mention the graphics are simply amazing? They are incredibly realistic and gorgeous.

Overall, the game is fun and relaxing.

Revolutionary game stumbles, but picks itself back up

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Burnout Paradise removes the old Burnout forumula and replaces it with an amazingly fun but seriously flawed open-world game more reminiscent of Need for Speed: Most Wanted than Burnout: Revenge.

The city you race in is well detailed. While it is only a 3 minute race from one side to the other, the amount and variety of that terrain is unparalleled. There are dozens of things to do in the single player campaign, from street races to shutting down other racers to landing all of the super jumps, etc. If you just want to take hot wheels cars and smash them all together, this is a great game.

Unfortunately, there are some fundamental flaws. If there is a particular race you need to complete, but you fail, you will have to drive back to the beginning to start over. This can take three + minutes above and beyond the time you have already lost by crashing. And you will crash... constantly. The crashes in Burnout Paradise are spectacular ballet of destruction that you will see every few seconds as you drive around. That is, of course, what happens while you're staring at the mini-map trying to navigate. Races in Paradise City have no big glowing chevrons and forced walls setup, so you'll have to race while keeping an eye on the map. Taking a wrong turn in Burnout is far more detrimental than crashing head-first into a bus.

All of these things point to a rushed development schedule, and keep Paradise from achieving quite what it could have: racer of the year. Your personal enjoyment of the game will be determined by how much the above issues (along with other stragglers) keep you from enjoying an otherwise amazing game.

Clear your afternoon before you start playing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those "WOW!" games you find every so often. The graphics here are great, and it's a free-roam city to race in (and a pretty big one at that). You choose to run a mission or if you'd like you can just drive around and find shortcuts or complete side tasks like hitting billboards or busting private areas. The car physics are good, and there's not a huge learning curve right off the bat to keep you from playing.

Starting off you only have one car to choose from. It's all right for a starter, but gets old quickly. Getting a new car isn't that hard though, so you don't have to keep it for long. And I love the way you can get a new paint job for free just by driving through the paint place!

The enemy AI is competitive, but not impossible. If you know shortcuts (and some of them will take a while to find), you can win most races with time to spare. Trying to win the race with no shortcuts, however, will be frustrating quickly.

Of course, the major draw of the game is the crashes and instant replays of such. You can do some spectacular smash-ups here, and when you hit top speed it will probably be what you do on an ongoing basis just to be amazed. There's a lot of fun to be had here, and it's not a game you get tired of quickly.

The only major downside to the game is the fact that it's single player only. I wish they'd have allowed us some head-to-head racing that didn't involve an online account. Still, it's the only fault I could see in this game and I wouldn't let it stop me from buying it. Highly recommended!

Huge scale, small scope. Some will love it, others (like me) will fall asleep at the wheel.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Burnout Paradise is a beautiful looking and sounding game, with an expansive city throughout which a wide variety of events beckon. It is a competent and worthwhile racer, with the added pleasures of stunt driving, and worthwhile online play.

I believe that all to be true, even as I'll say that I found the game rather dull, and very repetitive. With each aspect of the game that impressed me, I found related issues that were equally annoying. The draw distance for the roads and city/scene-scape for example is extraordinary -- not so for traffic which may and does at times appear almost immediately in front of you. Online play was fun while it worked, and my connection was solid, but that didn't seem to be the case for many others as people kept dropping and having to rejoin as we tried to play.

I am a huge fan of free/open driving type games, but this one feels more like the longest and most complex closed track in the world, rather than like a living city. The traffic is sparse and mindless, there's no real evidence of life in the city itself, no police-related consequences for racing through a busy intersection at 100mph and smashing into another car. My suggestion is not that these things would have been important to the core purpose of the city, which is really just a backdrop to a series of racing and stunt events on a closed network or roads, but it would have been nice if everything had felt a little more alive and vibrant between races.

I felt little drive to move from event to event. Like every other 360 title, there were achievements to obtain, better licenses to earn, more cars to drive, but I just felt that the game lacked a quality that made me really want to progress though. Instead, it was more of a hodgepodge of unrelated individual events that required a rather drab commute.

I'm going to stop well short of calling this a bad game. It's absolutely not, and I believe that a lot of people do and will enjoy it. For me, it's more rental than purchase quality, but that's a pretty subjective measure.

Here's the bottom line. If all you're looking for is a good racer; good audio, visuals, physics, online accessibility, and free roaming, then this is an entirely worthwhile choice. If you prefer some depth to your driving games; whether that come in the form of increasingly hostile authorities as is the case in Need for Speed Most Wanted, the hyper-realism (to cross platforms for the sake of example) Gran Turismo: 5 Prologue, the pure stunt/story play of Stuntman: Ignition, or the "living world" quality of Grand Theft Auto IV -- then this probably isn't what you're looking for.

If you don't desire that extra depth (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a specialized/focused game), then do check this one out, because I think you'll have a blast even if I didn't. I know, a mixed message review, "it wasn't for me, but it may well be for you," but that's the trick with these things, isn't it? Particularly when it's a solid, high-quality, well-developed product such as this, but one that may be a little too niche or otherwise narrow in scope to please those who want a more immersive experience. Ask yourself what you want out of a racing game, that's the trick to deciding whether this is a purchase, a rental, or a pass.

Fantastic Graphics and a Lot of Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Our family has been having a blast playing this game. Besides the adults, our children (7 and 10) have been using it a lot.

This is a single player video game. The graphics of the city are fantastic. You can see detailed buildings in the distance and as you get closer to them they appear--it is very realistic. It takes a little work to get used to the driving the car in a way that has some semblance of control so my first few attempts were a bit of a complete mess (crashing into things and so on). When you crash it switches to a sideways view as if a bystander was watching it and it goes to slow motion for the crash.

You can drive around wherever you want through the city (a small map is in the corner). When you are ready you can start a street race.

As you play the game more and get driving experience you move up levels that allows you to get a better car.

My boys really enjoy this game.

In case you are wondering about blood or gore, you can't see the drivers in the cars and when you crash there are no bodies, no blood or anything like that.

I can't figure out why this is rated for 10+, I've found nothing offensive in it so far to make me want to stop my 7 year old from playing it.

My kids laugh hysterically when they play this--they like to watch each other play and make comments and laugh as the game progresses.

Video games have sure come a long way from the Atari we had in my teen years--the sound and graphics on this are unbelievable!

EA takes a gamble for once.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Innovation is not one of EA's strong suits, and Criterion has basically built the same game over and over. Paradise, on the other hand, does things a little differently, incorporating a big, open world along the lines of a Grand Theft Auto. While the sandbox elements are light, there are a ton of different races to participate in, and once the taste is acquired, it is a good one.

However, it won't do anything to convert those who don't care much for racing games--Mario Kart doesn't count!--, and it may alienate those expecting more of the same, which is what EA normally tends to deliver.

The on-line play is excellent, smooth, and well-integrated.

Sweet, sweet, crashing action

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Finally, I own this game. After years of exclusive PC gaming, I got my hands on the Burnout series.

Instead of a long pontification, I'll get right to the pros and cons

+Open world can rock - Driving around a giant city is great and searching for hidden passages is a lot of fun
+Showtime is a great diversion when you want to mix things up
+The graphics are phenomenal
+Crash physics are great
+Multiplayer is fun and easy to sign onto

-Open world can suck - Nothing is more frustrating than missing a turn (or not knowing there is one without reading the map or pausing mid-race) and losing a race because of an unexpected turn
-The use of the xbox camera for mugshots is kind of pointless. Not a negative really, but doesn't add anything
-It'd be nice if they mixed up crashes and had some in real-time. It can be distracting and take me out of the game
-NO SPLIT-SCREEN TWO PLAYER??? That's just stupid. The whole point of Burnout is to unlock the cool cars in single player so that your buddies can come over, have a couple drinks and crash each other into smithereens. I learned this after buying the game and was REALLY disappointed.

Other than not having two player, the negatives are really just nit-picky things. This is a great game and one of the first games I bought when I picked up my xbox. I recommend it to all arcade racing junkies and good game lovers. Get it!

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