Home Gaming Burnout: Paradise City – Reviewed

Burnout: Paradise City – Reviewed

4 min read
4

Lets skip forward in time a bit here and imagine that you didn’t buy Burnout: Paradise City and you are now wondering if you should pick it up? This is often a question I see on the forums and I can answer it unequivocally now. Go buy this game. Yes it’s as straight forward as that. This game is very very good.

Okay now to the point where I have to explain myself.

I have never been much into my music and while I like a good soundtrack I would be pressed to think of another game with a great sound track apart from Halo (1,2,3)… Well Burnout has possibly the best soundtrack I have ever heard in my life. From Guns ‘N Roses to Avril Lavigne to Twisted Sister… this game has it all (listen to the video).

Not only are they great songs but they fit into the game so perfectly, it is actually a relaxing experience just driving around paradise city listening to the radio, however that is not what Burnout is about.

Burnout is about insane flips, twists, spins, jumps and crashes… oh the crashes are amazing. Real time vehicular destruction is the order of the day and even when you are leading a race and take a corner too late you can’t but watch in awe as your entire car turns into a crumpled mess before your very eyes. It’s an insanely beautiful experience, since there are no humans in paradise city we can find beauty in destruction.

Burnout: Paradise City

The game play varies from having to win a race to having to do a barrel roll through a hanging fuselage to having to destroy every other racer in the game. The open city layout works perfectly and with the ability to start a new event at virtually every intersection in the city the action is non stop.

The single player game is more than long enough in my humble opinion and the variety of game play will ensure you don’t get bored anytime soon.

However if like me you are more of a multi-player gamer then Burnout really does come into it’s own. The two types of multi-player that I have played is the straight forward races and the online challenges. The challenges are easily my most favourite side and getting a lobby of 8 people together to thread the needle through a hole in the cliff face is hugely entertaining.

Flying like a bird

The number of people in your lobby dictates which challenges are available to attempt and these challenges range from the exceptionally basic to the “You have got to be joking” difficult level.

As you rank up through the game more cars become available to you and each car is in it’s own category, either stunt, speed or aggression. Having an online battle with Doobiwan I quickly realised that taking a speed car into an aggression fight was an amazingly bad idea. Choose your vehicles if you want to succeed in this game.

So those are just some of the pro’s but the game isn’t perfect so what are the cons?

Burnout: Paradise City

1. Clipping – I have on a few occasions been embedded into a wall and had to restart my game. This is more than just a little annoying but to be fair it really does not happen often.

2. I haven’t measure it but the bandwidth usage seems to be on the high side

3. The Xbox 360 version requires a hard drive to play online and no you cannot use a memory card, why Microsoft ever released a non Hard drive enabled 360 I will never know

4. This game eats time…

So to the obligatory scores.

Single Player: 8 If you enjoy smashing, crashing, racing and exceptional speed buy this game… seriously who doesn’t enjoy all of that?

Multi-player: 7 The multi-player is fantastic but I doubt it will last longer than 1-2 months, once the challenges are finished there really isn’t much left.

Notes: Some notes before I get flamed… There is a whole lot more to this game and I really advise that you buy it, I am thoroughly enjoying it.

horrible cover art I am not a driving game fan, I didn’t like Forza 2 nor PGR 3 or 4… but this is fun. If you are looking for a simulator then get Forza 2 or PGR 4 if you want a mix between the two.

The cover art of this game is terrible, I don’t normally care less about the cover art but I have to admit I was horribly disappointed with this game’s cover.

This review was based on the 360 version but the two version are so similar that you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

So back to the original opinion, go and buy this game. It really is well worth the money and is yet another great game that is not leaving my collection anytime soon.

Last Updated: February 5, 2008

4 Comments

  1. doobiwan

    February 5, 2008 at 08:58

    Bollocks to that, I really like the cover art 😉 It’s something different as opposed to the usual “oh look, a car” racing game covers.

    Reply

  2. moegoe

    February 5, 2008 at 14:38

    Absolutely brilliant game, however I do miss the crash junctions…
    IMO Showtime sucks!!! although I do manage to get well into the 10’s of millions, it’s just not as fun as the origional crash mode.
    I love this game nevertheless

    Reply

  3. doobiwan

    February 5, 2008 at 15:21

    I like Showtime, my only critisizm is that it doesn’t really affect the game, ie unlock anything, or provide progressive Achievements.

    Reply

  4. TrueBlue

    March 5, 2008 at 08:17

    And you forgot somthing the 360 version you can listen to your own music and thats is very nice.

    Reply

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