Burnout: Paradise on PS3

So, so annoying

A customer from Guildford , 03/05/2008

Burnout Paradise should have been a great game. The handling is suitably arcadey, drifting and dodging oncoming traffic is satisfying, the graphics are great, and you can have a lot of fun just wandering around the city, driving the wrong way down the interstate, causing mayhem in rush hour traffic, boosting off the ends of unfinished bridges, exploring building sites, leaping from the roofs of multi-storey car parks and looking for ramps to launch you through the air. Unfortunately, while the underlying nuts and bolts of the game are really good, the overall structure is a total car wreck.

The developers set out to make a seamless world with no loading screens and as few menus as possible. Mission accomplished. The problem is that they stuck to this mantra even when it got in the way of making the game fun to play.

For example, if I finish second in a race or fail a timed event by a couple of seconds, I want to be able to replay that event again *straight away* while my adrenaline's still up and the route is fresh in my mind. But there's no option to do that in Burnout Paradise. Why not? Because that 'would have introduced loading into the game, which we didn't want to do'. Apparently having the game take a few seconds to load the necessary data in the background while it shows your car spinning its tires would have offended the developers' sense of self righteousness. So instead you have to waste a couple of minutes driving back across town to the starting line to restart the event.

When pretty much everyone who played the game pre-release complained about this, the developers' response was to suggest they try a different event instead of retrying the one they just failed. Which is completely missing the point.

This level of arrogance is visible throughout the game. For example, you can't skip any of the cutscenes. Why not? Maybe the developers were worried that their cinematics guys might get upset. Or maybe they think we're too dumb to understand their precious game unless they're holding our hands every step of the way.

Which might explain why you're constantly being interrupted by DJ Atomica giving often glaringly obvious hints. And why the developers felt the need to keep pausing the game every time he passes on one of these pearls of wisdom to make sure you're paying full attention to his annoying voice. I'm trying to drive here, for god's sake! Stop interrupting me.

Sadly the game is full of irritations, flaws and ommissions.

For example, every intersection in the game is the starting point for an event, so (unless you're out in the countryside) you're never far from a race. But each intersection only has one event, and some of these are 'burning route' time trials which are limited to a single type of car. If you're in the wrong car, you can't play that event. If you want to give it a go and you're lucky enough to own the right vehicle, you have to drive all the way back to the nearest junk yard, switch cars and then try and find your way back to the starting line for the event again.

In a race you get a handy compass at the top of the screen showing you which direction the finishing line is in, and when you get to an intersection that the game thinks you should turn at your indicator blinks and the name of the road you're going to be turning onto flashes at the top of the screen. But when you're just driving around the city, there's no way to set your own destination on the map screen (say, if you want to go back to the junk yard or get to the starting line for a specific event) and then get directions to it the same way. It's a really obvious thing to do, and would have helped a lot, particularly in the early stages of the game before you learn your way around the city. But apparently nobody at EA thought of it.

And learning your way around the city isn't easy. It's huge, and full of winding roads, intersections and sneaky short cuts. Which is great. Except that the whole city is unlocked right from the start of the game. Why not start the player off in one part of town and (like in the demo) block the rest off with roadworks or whatever, so the player can get to know that area before being let loose in the next? This works great in the GTA games, which also feature huge, sprawling open cities, and it could have helped here too. But instead you're just dumped in the middle of a strange city with absolutely no direction. There is such a thing as too much freedom in a video game.

There's also no real sense of progression - every block in the city and every event in it is unlocked right from the start of the game. So all you gain from taking part in events is more points on your license, the occasional new car and (each time your license is upgraded) the chance to replay all the events you've already done at a higher difficulty level.

And just to really add insult to injury, the game's open world and lack of a traditional menu for choosing events also means that there's no split-screen multiplayer, something which has been standard in pretty much every racing game for the last decade or two. If you want to play Burnout Paradise with a friend, you'll have to do it online. Which is a huge missed opportunity.

So like I said, there's the foundations of a really fun game in here. But it's buried under a poor structure and lots of bad or just plain obstinate design decisions.

Read all reviews

what more do you want?

A customer from leek , 14/01/2008

Only played the demo version but OMG!!!!! this game is smooth with great crash scenes and the freeroaming round the map is great go online and it gets even better!!!

the raceand stunt runs are fantastic the slalom style against oncoming traffic finding ramps and shortcuts . refilling with boost and if yo crash you can drive thru a garage and hey presto all fixed or if its a bad one you get back in the action allmost straight away.

I dont think there is much more FUN to be had from a driving game!!!

Read all reviews

not for me

Vern from Carterton [Highly rated reviewer] , 03/04/2008

i know some of my friends like this but its not for me. its too ardadey and reppettitive. get gta when it comes out for the fun or need for speed for arcade driving. sorry...no good

Read all reviews

Massivly Addictive

A customer from Rossendale , 13/11/2008

When i first picked up this game and stuck it in my PS3 i had the intention only to get the trophies and then send it back. But WOW i was amazed how good this game actually was.

It loaded up and presented me with a sleek shiny news screen all about the game then threw me into the city in a rubbishy car. I thought ermmm ok..? what now.? So i got on the biggest road i could find drove as fast as i could and boosted into a wall. Lol. I thought this will be funny il probably lag through the wall or at least enough to see through it. Nothing. I was amazing at how the game is sooo smooth. Nothing will make the game loose a frame and driving into a wall at stupid speeds will not glitch you into it or something along those lines. The game started easy, owning people in my crappy car and driving them into walls 'Takedowns' and gradually gets harder and harder and faster and faster. Unlike most people i like the way if you loose a race,stunt run, marked man or whatever you might be doing that you have to either drive back to the start or find another, closer one.

The game gives you such a sense of freedom, unlike games such as 'Juiced, Need For Speed' where you win a race and you choose another. Wow so interesting. But here you get in YOUR car that YOU choose then YOU pick an event YOU play that event the way YOU want to. If you get bored of doing races (NOT EASY TO GET BORED) you go and do something different like going 6078486Mph off the end of a cliff. Smashing through anything you see of breaking some Online/Offline records and any street you like.

THEN after id finished all the races and had nothing really much to do around the city having unlocked near enough everything and earning the platinum trophy, i didnt want to send it back! Id had so much fun with it! So, i had a go online doing some 'Freeburn' around the city with random people. I chose challenges and we met up to do some massive jumps. I was expecting massive lag even to the point of going through people's cars. What did i get? A perfect, lag free game of insane stunt which was very enjoyable.

There are masses to do around the city and online alike. BUT, if i had one grumble it would be the incredibly annoying 'DJ Atomica'. For those of you that do not know he is possibly the most gay person in gaming since the dawn of time. Constatly there interupting my custom playlist of songs off my hardrive giving the most pointless and stupid info EVER.. If i could throw the guy who did the voice off a cliff, I would.

Other than that, an epic game. 9.5/10

Read all reviews

Massivly Addictive

A customer from Rossendale , 13/11/2008

When i first picked up this game and stuck it in my PS3 i had the intention only to get the trophies and then send it back. But WOW i was amazed how good this game actually was.

It loaded up and presented me with a sleek shiny news screen all about the game then threw me into the city in a rubbishy car. I thought ermmm ok..? what now.? So i got on the biggest road i could find drove as fast as i could and boosted into a wall. Lol. I thought this will be funny il probably lag through the wall or at least enough to see through it. Nothing. I was amazing at how the game is sooo smooth. Nothing will make the game loose a frame and driving into a wall at stupid speeds will not glitch you into it or something along those lines. The game started easy, owning people in my crappy car and driving them into walls 'Takedowns' and gradually gets harder and harder and faster and faster. Unlike most people i like the way if you loose a race,stunt run, marked man or whatever you might be doing that you have to either drive back to the start or find another, closer one.

The game gives you such a sense of freedom, unlike games such as 'Juiced, Need For Speed' where you win a race and you choose another. Wow so interesting. But here you get in YOUR car that YOU choose then YOU pick an event YOU play that event the way YOU want to. If you get bored of doing races (NOT EASY TO GET BORED) you go and do something different like going 6078486Mph off the end of a cliff. Smashing through anything you see of breaking some Online/Offline records and any street you like.

THEN after id finished all the races and had nothing really much to do around the city having unlocked near enough everything and earning the platinum trophy, i didnt want to send it back! Id had so much fun with it! So, i had a go online doing some 'Freeburn' around the city with random people. I chose challenges and we met up to do some massive jumps. I was expecting massive lag even to the point of going through people's cars. What did i get? A perfect, lag free game of insane stunt which was very enjoyable.

There are masses to do around the city and online alike. BUT, if i had one grumble it would be the incredibly annoying 'DJ Atomica'. For those of you that do not know he is possibly the most gay person in gaming since the dawn of time. Constatly there interupting my custom playlist of songs off my hardrive giving the most pointless and stupid info EVER.. If i could throw the guy who did the voice off a cliff, I would.

Other than that, an epic game. 9.5/10

Read all highest rated reviews

Huge Disappointment

Nerris from London , 18/07/2008

This was such a depressing shame, the game is just far too large and seemingly, pointless… You progress through the game to earn points on your license, ther is no progression, nothing to maintain interest, and the sheer magnitude of things to do is a huge put off. Yes if I had a year to dedicate to learning the routes etc… But frankly I have much better things to do.

Having said that, game play is smooth and graphics are good, but nothing major to make up for the obvious flaws. Sorry guys, better luck next time...

Read all highest rated reviews