'Burnout Paradise' - Game review
9 out of 10
At first I thought this game was aimless, with no help regarding how to find its secrets and no championship structure to spur you on through the races. After playing for over 20 hours I realise I was wrong. It's a great playground for cars, a sandbox of four-wheel fun.
Of course, one thing that does push you to play the game is the achievements. Like Crackdown, it's the achievements that keep you playing. I can't imagine putting 20 hours into the PS3 version but I certainly got hooked on Xbox 360.
The game encourages you to explore and try things you otherwise wouldn't bother trying. It does a great job of leading you past its secrets so that you notice them and feel clever for discovering them, when the game has actually given you big fat hints. It's quite clever and carefully designed.
The game is also great online. Sure, you can race online. But you can do so much more than just race. A big part is the collaborative multiplayer, which consists of lots of challenges that require various numbers of players to complete - for example, 'Go to the airfield with 5 players and get 2 minutes of combined air time on the jumps there'. Also, if you have the Xbox Live Vision camera, you can exchange mugshots and "smugshots" with people that you take down (or who take you down) online. The online functionality is seamless and great fun.
What this game is not is a normal Burnout game. If you come to it expecting Burnout of old, you won't get it here. Sure, it has many of the features and just as much attention to detail and balance as the previous games. However, the open world environment means it is not actually as good as a racing game. Traditional racing can be quite frustrating, with poor signage of which route to take (which is bad when you're doing 200mph) and no instant retry if you fail. In some ways it would have been better not to call this 'Burnout' because I think it has confused some people.
But apart from not being what Burnout fans will expect, it is a very, very good driving game. If you want a driving game you can play with or without friends for many, many hours and you don't care too much about realism or hardcore racing, you should definitely buy Burnout Paradise.
At first I thought this game was aimless, with no help regarding how to find its secrets and no championship structure to spur you on through the races. After playing for over 20 hours I realise I was wrong. It's a great playground for cars, a sandbox of four-wheel fun.
Of course, one thing that does push you to play the game is the achievements. Like Crackdown, it's the achievements that keep you playing. I can't imagine putting 20 hours into the PS3 version but I certainly got hooked on Xbox 360.
The game encourages you to explore and try things you otherwise wouldn't bother trying. It does a great job of leading you past its secrets so that you notice them and feel clever for discovering them, when the game has actually given you big fat hints. It's quite clever and carefully designed.
The game is also great online. Sure, you can race online. But you can do so much more than just race. A big part is the collaborative multiplayer, which consists of lots of challenges that require various numbers of players to complete - for example, 'Go to the airfield with 5 players and get 2 minutes of combined air time on the jumps there'. Also, if you have the Xbox Live Vision camera, you can exchange mugshots and "smugshots" with people that you take down (or who take you down) online. The online functionality is seamless and great fun.
What this game is not is a normal Burnout game. If you come to it expecting Burnout of old, you won't get it here. Sure, it has many of the features and just as much attention to detail and balance as the previous games. However, the open world environment means it is not actually as good as a racing game. Traditional racing can be quite frustrating, with poor signage of which route to take (which is bad when you're doing 200mph) and no instant retry if you fail. In some ways it would have been better not to call this 'Burnout' because I think it has confused some people.
But apart from not being what Burnout fans will expect, it is a very, very good driving game. If you want a driving game you can play with or without friends for many, many hours and you don't care too much about realism or hardcore racing, you should definitely buy Burnout Paradise.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
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