Burnout: Paradise + more

As with most the posts I’ve made here I always like to include a little extra at the end to at least have the slim chance someone decides to read this all the way through and see or someone just skips this review and goes staight to the end to see what’s extra.

But let’s start off with the beginning and review Burnout: Paradise. I’m reviewing the 360 version, because it’s the one I have.

Burnout Paradise as the name suggests is a Burnout game set in Paradise City, a place which will be not familiar at all I wouldn’t think until you race around a bit. I’ve played Burnout 2 before and some of the places are very similar because it’s set in the same place. I’ve already found such classic areas I’ve loved such as Flimsy Fence of Certain Doom and Drift of Bus Crash but whatever. The basic aim of the game is to race, smash, roll and flee your way to more cars, higher licence rank and of course those tasty tasty achievements.

That’s about the gist of what you have to do. I suppose it wouldn’t be a great review if I said just that so I suppose I’ll have to delve deeper into it. The things I do for you guys. Honestly!

There are 5 main ways to gain points on your licence. Speeding, reckless driving, death by dangerous driving, resisting arrest and speeding again. If you get 12 points on your licence you get it revoked and oh wait wrong type of points.

There are 5 main ways to gain “points” on your licence. You get 1 point for each event won and after a certain amount you go up a rank. The 5 ways are Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological, Moral and Experiance (if you get that then hats off to you). Wow I made two jokes out of the main points system in this game I’m that awesome.

There are 5 main ways to gain “points” on your licence. You get 1 point for each event won and after a certain amount you go up a rank. The 5 ways are Races, Stunt Runs, Road Rage, Marked Man and Burning Routes. Races are self explainatory, as are stunt runs. Come first and do some stunts respectively. Road Rage pits you against a few other cars and you have to to take a certain number of them out in a time limit. They keep respawning near you so if you get lost don’t worry they’ll be near you again soon. Marked Man is almost the opposite. You have to get from one place to another before you get smashed to death by the lolwatsuperstrong cars. And Burning Routes are basically using a certain car to do a time trial and winning gets you a free car.

To start said events, you need to find a junction with traffic lights. All of them have one. For races, burning routes and marked mans you race from said traffic light to one of 8 locations. These are the only places they end and can end, which is quite a good system I find. Every few wins a car will start running around the city and whilst cruising if you take it down you win it. Difficult when you’re driving, said, a light speed car and you’re trying to take down a fricking van. I did that, by the way. I get wrecked.

So that’s the jist of it, quite simple really. There is also an online mode, oh yes. Freeburning is the only one I’ve tried and, having played a 5 player one as the most (Myself, Toshi, moot, PinkFloydYoshi and Contention) I can say the online is brilliant. We spent a good half hour running around a figure of 8 dirt track just crashing into each other, pure hilarity. There are some challanges too. 50 for each number of players 2 to 8. Me and moot have completed all 50 2 player ones. I think they sold out a bit with these, most are just repeats as you go up the player numbers. The same things but with more amounts. Quite lame really. Although some provide much hilarity, see the 3 player jump over two people on the steps, 5 player flat spin off the steps and 5 player meet in a small area, the latter taking us ages because some people *coughpinkfloydyoshicough* kept jumping on us. Moot especially hated that one and most likely gave a good amount of bad rep.

So is the game actually any good. Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees. This game is brilliant amounts of fun, and whilst it may just seem like an average racing game with some silly crash animations and fun takedowns, it is actually rather addictive. I’ve spent the good part of 15 hours on it so far, maybe more. The races may get a bit tedious and the burning routes infuriating, but there’s just a moment of golden glory when you nudge a racer into a split ramp and what him get obliterated on the asphalt. The online makes it all the sweeter, and some hilarious moments such as Pink’s indestructable car, moot’s horrific luck and repeated vertical takedowns make this one to own if you have a 360.

Of course, it’s not all pudding and gravy in paradise. Some issues include DJ Atomica or Atomika or whatever being a noisy git. Sometimes he’s funny and there are some quite humourous lines, though most the time you wish he’d stop talking. The song list is questionable. Avril Lavigne? What? Most the cars are pretty piss poor unfortunately hence you will find yourself only using a select few cars. Marked Man opponents are cheap as crap, events are quite unforgiving, the map is hard to use, in races the turn off markers come in too late and so you can’t turn in time and inevitably crash, the physics sometimes cause you to clip a car and flip endlessly, and sometimes jumping from a cliff and landing on your roof and flipping onto your wheels isn’t a wreck. Takedowns online are unpredictable, the showtime is a bit too silly and there’s no Marked man and road rage online events, which is a shame because that would be epic.

Don’t let the above discourage you, it is still a fantastic amount of fun and well worth the £40 or $50 or whatever the price in yankland.

For those unfortunate people who live in the cesspit of scoring I’d say this deserves a high score. Yeah that’s all you get from me!

And now I’m off to work. I work in the warehouse of Morrisons, jolly good fun (not) but pay is nice. If you’ve skipped this review to see the extra, then the extra is that there is a hidden message in the review. Post a comment here or on YC when you find it.

Later guys.