Iain does the “your car has been obliterated in a shower of sparks” dance in your face.
I don’t play a lot of racing games. It’s a genre that, as a rule, I leave to other people. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them because when I do delve into the category I usually have fun, despite my own short-comings. But it’s these short-comings that keep me from becoming fanatical about them, in the same way that I do about other types of game. I don’t drive in real life. When all my friends were getting driving lessons for their 17th birthday, I asked for a DVD player. As such, my understanding of the intricacies of gear changes and braking are quite limited (although years of Top Gear and pub conversations have given me at least a passing knowledge.) This means that my approach to a driving game is to hold the accelerator, and occasionally hit the brake far, far too late.
It’s this very tactic, the one that results in embarrassing defeats in most driving games, that makes Burnout oh so very satisfying. And now we’ve been given a whole city in which to be reckless.
Now, I’m not going to use phrases as irresponsible as “real” or “living and breathing” to describe Paradise City, because it is quite obviously neither. There are no non-motorised inhabitants for one, and I’m fairly certain that when towns and cities are planned, questions such as “Is this a fun corner to take sideways, at 250mph in what probably used to be a car?” aren’t asked, or if they are, the opposite answer is desired. Also, it may just be Basingstoke being typically characterless, but our pavements are conspicuously clear of ramps designed to send cars into barrel rolls.
Stunningly pretty
Paradise is expansive however, not to mention stunningly pretty and superbly designed. You get the impression that it’s many, many individual tracks layered on top of each other with a web of connecting roads. The effect this has is that it always feels natural tearing around the streets at break-neck (and everything else) speeds, essentially moving from circuit to circuit in an impressively fluid way.
Of course, this also means that there are no set tracks for the events (which can all be started dynamically, just by pulling up to traffic lights), you’re simply given a starting point, and in most cases a finishing point and told to go for your life. As such, races are often won or lost with navigation decisions. Indeed, during my learning curve in Paradise, I often found myself making ridiculously dull-brained wrong turns and ending up on the interstate or something equally useless. This soon passed though and it wasn’t long before I could confidently navigate the majority of the city with the help of the map and compass.
It’s also here, in the freeformity of the events, that I find my first major gripe. In the event that you do take the wrong corner and find yourself in last place with no chance to catch up, there’s no easy way to quit the race and retry it. You can quit the race quite easily, by stopping the car for a couple of seconds but then you have to get back to the original starting point to retry it. This is dulled somewhat by the amount of races and challenges available to you at any one time, as you’re never more than a minute or so away from a set of traffic lights but still, if I lose a race my first instinct is to retry it and make sure I give the previous winner a damn good kicking second time around.
Is this a fun corner to take sideways, at 250mph in what probably used to be a car?
This is but a minor niggle though, compared to the flurry of impressive features and mechanics that have been introduced. For example, there are now only three classes of car; Speed, Aggression and Stunt, but they differ fundamentally in their handling of one important area, boost. Speed class cars are light, fast and behave just like they used to back in Burnout 2, with the boost bar building up gradually and only becoming usable when full, however if you use the whole bar in one stint you’ll achieve an eponymous “Burnout” and the boost bar will refill quicker. The secret here is in the chaining of the burnouts, allowing you to essentially boost forever.
Aggression cars however, are more suited to the Road Rage and Marked Man events as they’re heavier, stronger and generally slower. Their boost mechanism is very similar to that employed in Burnout 3: Takedown, as the boost bar fills and grows as you take other racers down. Stunt class cars occupy the middle ground, they have a good mix of both strength and speed and a large boost bar that can be used at any time. This means that as well as choosing the right route, you also have to choose the right car.
The other thing that Burnout is known for, other than the boosting, is the crashes, and these are as well represented as ever. Crash mode in its previous incarnations has been removed and replaced with Showtime, which can be activated at any time with the press of a couple of buttons. Apart from this change though, it remains pretty much as it was, the goal is to hit things with your wreck, racking up obscene bills and trying to beat the record for most damage caused on that stretch of road. The aftertouch guidance is still there, although now you can bounce along the road using your boost bar as you go, no longer relying on other cars to give you momentum.
Reassess the situation
While it’s a shame to see Crash mode go, it’s good to see it replaced with a worthy successor. Granted, it’s now more about your control of the crash rather than the approach and it lacks that degree of randomness that it had in the past but it’s still a lot of fun.
The spontaneous crashes have received the same love and attention that they have in previous games, with the action changing perspective and slowing down to emphasise the impacts. The sickening crunches, crumpling metalwork and vast array of jettisoned…bits, are enough to make you reassess how stupid it is to get in a ton of metal, fill it with a flammable liquid and make it go fast. But only for a second.
makes you reassess how stupid it is to get in a ton of metal, fill it with a flammable liquid and make it go fast
Like the other Burnout titles, there is a fair emphasis on multiplayer, but this time around it’s handled entirely online with no splitscreen action available. This is a definite disappointment, as we’ll miss the opportunity to pile your opponent into the crash barrier and do the “your car has been obliterated in a shower of sparks” dance in their face.
To make up for this though, the online features are plentiful and seamlessly integrated into the experience, including the option to display a photo of your opponent at the exact moment of humiliation using the PlayStation Eye or Xbox 360 camera.
Thus providing the icing on an extremely large, and very speedy cake. Paradise is by no means as perfect as the name implies but it’s the closest the franchise has come to the glory days of Burnout 3 since, well, the glory days of Burnout 3.
GAME's Verdict
- Very pretty, with a superb level of detail on the cars and environment.
- Incredible sense of speed.
- Vast number of events and things to find while driving around.
- No splitscreen multiplayer.
- No custom soundtracks for the PS3 version.
- Retrying a race involves tracking all the way back to the start point.
Review by: Iain Thomas
Version Tested: PS3
Review Published: 01.02.08