Burnout Paradise

Ok, no quoting the Guns ‘N Roses song. Unless you’ve been tucked away in the ‘land of no rock ‘n roll,’ chances are pretty good you’ve heard “Paradise City,” which – coincidentally – just happens to be in the title of the EA’s latest iteration in the Burnout series.

Burnout Paradise is a free-wheeling sandbox world that allows players to choose their own course through the game, do what they want when they want to do, in a vibrant city with a convoluted mess of roads (like any city) and the option to just wheel around or spin tires at a stop light and pick up events.

Is this the best Burnout to date? Arguably yes. Is it the best car racer currently available for the PS3? Yes. This is what EA’s Need for Speed wants to be but often falls short of achieving. The controls are silky smooth, the framerate is steady, the physics are wonderfully realized and the crashes are spectacular.

Then you have a great soundtrack and a city dotted with easter eggs in the form of ramps to use, billboards to crash through and … well, you get the idea.

Paradise also plays off a touch of the role play in that you acquire points by winning races and these upgrade your license, which results in the ability to unlock better cars. The cars themselves fall into that typical category of handling and acceleration ratings, but once fixed up, they are total eye candy.

There are 75 cars total in the game and you can race to unlock a few, but on occasion a “new” vehicle will appear somewhere in the city and you have to track it down, crash it (yep, that means using your vehicle in a manner for which it was probably not designed) and then it appears in the junk yard. The junk yard is your garage. Of course, the cars in the junk yard are not in the best of condition, usually exhibiting the signs of being wrecked. But a drive-thru body shop fixes them right up. Crashing on the streets will also take a toll on your vehicles, but there are two types of crashes. The ones where you ding up the car and need to hit the body shop and then the ones where you total the vehicle, at which point it resurrects looking shiny and new.

Each car also comes equipped with a Burnout meter – consider it nitro boost. You can use them at crucial points in races to gain an edge, but they can be used up. No problem. Just drive through a gas station and your refuel that.

One of the nicest elements of this game is the ‘easter eggs’ scattered throughout the city. Driving along, you notice a pair of ramps that, if hit at the proper speed and angle, will allow you to do a 360-degree roll and land on your tires. Of course, you get points for that sort of thing, but there really is nothing that points to it being there.

The races run a gamut between the nicely defined and the ‘where the heck am I going?’ variety. There is a mini-map planted in a corner, and it is serviceable but hardly of use in the heat of a race. As you begin the game, the other cars you encounter in races (the non-playing racers) have serviceable AI but can easily be beaten. However, move along in your career and the competition gets a little stiffer.

The soundtrack is EA Trax and includes a very good assortment of tunes, both classic rock and some bands you may not be familiar with. This is likely one of the better musical scores to grace a racer in some time. But just when you get comfortable with the rock tracks, walk away from the game for a few moments. The screen goes into a grayscale and … is that classical music playing??? A nice bit of shifting within the musical score.

The controls are very easy to understand and the handbrake will become one of your best friends. You can use it to powerslide easily

As for the graphics, Paradise is gorgeous. The city is well done and the crashes will not fail to impress. There is the slow-motion filter applied to each crash so you can see the destruction in agonizingly detail. Hats off to the developers; this is spectacular stuff.

Is there a downside to the game? Perhaps, if sandbox is not your cup of tea and you prefer more directed gameplay. Races play out until you cross the finish line or until your car is totaled. And there is an overall lack of variety in what you do in the course of the game. Certainly, each race has shortcuts possible, and you have to discover those for yourself.

You want multiplayer? Burnout has it – online and in the form of head to head. The game also uses the PS3 Eye to not only put a real face on your driver’s license to but capture you reaction to either victory or defeat and send that image to your opponent. Your opponent’s image (if he or she is using an Eye) will also be available to you.

Paradise is a fantastic racing vehicle developed by Criterion Games. This is a title that sets the benchmark for PS3 racers and deserves to be played.

Gameplay: 9.0
The controls are wonderful and easy to learn. Of course, finding shortcuts or perfecting that 360-degree aerial roll takes a bit of work and time.

Graphics: 9.4
This is a gorgeous game. The slow-mo crashes, the details on the vehicles, the lighting and textures all create a vibrant city.

Sound: 9.2
The rock tracks are really good, the ‘intermission’ music is a surprise and the rest is what one expects from a racer.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 9.0
You take races at your leisure, which may appeal to a lot of people, but there are bound to be some who will not like such an open-ended system. Graphically, though, the engine used in this game is first rate

Multiplayer: 9.0
Head-to-head online racing with Eye support will have players cheering or scowling for their opponents to see. And getting into the online mode is so simple that gamers may wonder why others had not thought of this before. The transition from online to offline is handled very smoothly.

Overall: 9.2
An absolute blast to play, Paradise is the benchmark for sandbox racing titles on the PS3. The crashes are spectacular, the challenge is definitely there, and the game abounds with eye candy and easter eggs. This is, arguably, the best Burnout to date and certainly one of the best racing games on the PS3.