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.

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.

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

Mark burns rubber...

Criterion’s Burnout games have long been held high as a bastion of the arcade racer genre, with plenty of gamers (including our very own Jonny) swearing by Burnout’s third outing, Takedown, as probably the best game of its type that there’s ever ever been. The fourth edition, Revenge, wasn’t quite as well regarded, but still gave fans another dose of what they love most about the series: seriously speedy hi-octane driving through traffic-strewn streets, with jaw-dropping cinematic slow-mo crashes an essential element of the racing experience.

Burnout Paradise is the first Burnout available exclusively on next-gen consoles, and as such it not only looks supersmashingreat in shiny HD, but redefines the Burnout experience in a way we could never have seen working without serious technical constraints on lower spec consoles.

Reckless automotive abandon

Burnout Paradise is essentially a cross between the crash-happy thrill of Burnouts gone by, and the free-roaming ride of Test Drive Unlimited. And that’s no bad thing. Atari’s open-world racer was full of great ideas, and that template looks to be a perfect fit for Burnout’s more extravagant brand of reckless automotive abandon.

To that end, Burnout Paradise has one single load screen when you start the game... and that’s it. No pausing mid-race as you roll around Paradise City, and not even a screen for going into auto-repair shops; you simply drive through them and continue on with your forward momentum. The map thus becomes your gateway to progressing through the game. Burnout Paradise proffers 120 challenges, all available from the get-go; you just drive to a race intersection, pull break and accelerate simultaneously, and away you go.

With three different main types of race and two sub-missions for every stretch of road in Paradise City, Burnout Paradise is going to offer a diverse selection of car-cruising gameplay.

Races, the main element of Burnout titles, will have a start and an end, but no set route; encouraging you to choose your own path and discover the game’s 250 shortcuts along the way. Road Rage races meanwhile will task players with taking down cars within a time limit, and Stunt missions want you boosting, rolling, spinning, powersliding, jumping and generally doing as many insane stunts as possible to get a certain score. On top of this, the d-pad will let you access road rules tasks, which come down to breaking a speed limit or smashing up traffic.

To match the three main mission types, Burnout Paradise presents three different car types and literally dozens of individual vehicles to be unlocked throughout the game. Speed, Stunt and Aggression cars will each be suited to their own obvious disciplines, but the method of unlocking them will not be for the faint of heart. Winning races in Burnout Paradise will put these on the streets, free for you to take down; and only by smashing them up as you drive around Paradise City will you unlock them as playable vehicles.

Smashed into oblivion

Accruing a vast selection of stylish motors in Burnout Paradise is sure to be a priority, because of the title’s seamless take on multiplayer. On the lead platform, Xbox 360, you’ll simply choose to meet or invite your friends already playing Burnout Paradise, and they’ll leap right into your city, where races can be partaken and a host of co-operative goals are on offer. And if both players have USB cameras connected, there’s a neat feature that takes a picture of your friend’s face when you smash them into oblivion.

As a next-gen exclusive, Burnout Paradise looks lovely, and the sensation of speed has never been more apparent. The seamless load times and expansive environment will only further enhance the experience, and if this delivers as it’s promising, Burnout Paradise could be the very best racer the much-loved series has yet seen.

Preview by: Mark 'Zoom Zoom' Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Preview Published: 14.12.07