Ever since the horrible experience I had with my first PS3 racing game (Need For Speed Carbon)I have been hoping that Burnout would satisfy my need for a racing game. Fortunately for me this game is a pretty fun game to play when im on the mood for crashing cars and speeding across highways.
Burnout Paradise follows the theme of "free roam racing" in Paradise City. There is no real goal or story you just go to whatever race you want and upgrade your license by winning as many races as you can. There is more then racing in this game though. There are several other modes such as Marked Man Road Rage and Stunt Run. Marked man involves you haven't to avoid other cars that are trying to kill you until you get to the finish line, Road Rage involves you having to kill a certain amount of cars to win and Stunt Run focuses on getting points through performing jumps and spins. All these game modes and a selection of 75 cars means that you can get a lot out of this game plus 2 free future updates adds even more replayability.
All this doesn't mean that the game is not without it's faults. The first biggest one would be in the racing. The way it works is they tell you where to go and leave it up to you to figure out the fastest route. This means if your finish line is far away you can end up taking a wrong turn and then losing the whole race if you don't know the map from back to front. If it wasn't for the other racing modes you can use then the game would be a lot more frustrating but since you can choose your race this is pretty excusable.
The next downside is the way you select cars. You select your car at the beginning of the game but if you want to choose another you will have to drive back to the junkyard and choose another one. I just wish there was some sort of way to instantly warp back instead of having to drive back. It would make it a little easier and faster.
The final small flaw is there are no people in this game. Not in cars, not on the sidewalk, not anywhere. A little weird but this is simply because of the E rating so you can't run people over.
The online part of the game works very well. You can go in and out of it seamlessly and there is very little lag. Plus they add new cars to use in the online part of the game and have integrated the PS Eye into the game so you can take a snapshot of yourself for your license.
Overall Burnout Paradise is doing a lot of things right. It is updating often, it's getting trophies in the future, it has in game music and it looks and plays very well. So far they are not charging us a dime for all this. With a variety of racing modes and future updates to keep the gameplay fresh Burnout may not be shelved for a while.
