Customer Reviews:
 Brilliant online, underwhelming offline February 4, 2008
KM (England)
29 out of 29 found this review helpful
'Burnout Paradise' is the fifth entry in the successful racing/smash-em-up series and is probably the best yet, giving you full access to over 250 square miles of the beautiful Paradise City.
GAMEPLAY - 5/5
Instead of going through levels like on the previous Burnout games, the city is completely open so you can just drive about finding secret locations, or pull up to the traffic lights (and by holding the L2 and R2 buttons) you can take part in one of hundreds of challenges that include races, takedowns, marked man and burning laps. When crashing into another car, if you hold the L1 and R1 buttons it will start Showtime mode (which is basically the same as Crash mode) where you must cause as many crashes as possible to build up the cost meter. The best thing about Burnout Paradise is the online play through PSN where you can play against and with your friends in a series of multiplayer challenges, where there are over 350 to choose from.
GRAPHICS - 5/5
Some of the best so far on the PS3. Driving around the city is just so lifelike and if you have played the previous games you may recognise some of the sections from those games. It's just a shame that the games is so fast, as you miss out on looking at the gorgeous locations.
SOUND - 3/5
The engine noise and helpful tips from the DJ accompany a soundtrack that won;t be to everyone's taste (mainly rock songs). From the likes of Guns N Roses to NERD as well as all of the tracks from Burnouts 1 to 3. Once you have played this for about 5 or 6 hours though, the track loops will have you switching the sound off.
LIFESPAN - 4/5
You'll either love or hate the open city format. If you love it (which you most likely will if you take it online) the amount of hours you can play this is endless. As well as the 100s of challenged, you can create your own race types and invite your friends and the variety is unlimited. Offline however only has a limitied appeal as driving around the city on your own can get a little boring and you'll feel the lack of competition a bit underwhelming.
OVERALL - 4/5
Burnout Paradise is a good, fun game that moves at an incredible pace. There's plenty to unlock and the city is massive, so lots to explore. The online play works perfectly but as an offline game it gets dull fairly quickly and lets the game down, stopping me from giving it the full 5 out of 5 rating. Highly recommended for PSN players though.
 Made in Paradise... February 11, 2008
Doctor Worm (Portugal)
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
The fifth installement of Burnout is placed in an open world environment named Paradise City. This new approach changes completely the concept created by the previous Burnout games, but is it for the better?
Definitely yes! Burnout Paradise revamps the notion of fun. Apart from the initial (and long) loading screen, there isn't one single load during the entire game. You can play the game from start till end without a stop in the action. When talking about next generation game enhancements, it's this kind of stuff gamers are expecting. Of course this change comes with a price, which is getting used to it. Having an entire city to explore with hundreds of events to run and hundreds of goals to achieve can be overwhelming at first but, as soon as you get the hang of it, you will never want to see another menu in your life. What do you prefer, spending a couple of minutes going through menus and loading screens or spending that time driving and having fun until you reach the next event? I would go for the fun.
Paradise City is packed with thing to do. You can race several cars in a race event. You can try to escape mad drivers in a marked man pursuit. You can perform crazy stunts in a stunt run. You can takedown other racers in a road rage. You can even prove yourself with a specific car in a burning route. All these are scattered around Paradise City. Almost each intersection has one, which allows you, most of the times, to start another event as soon as you finish one. Apart from it you have 400 shortcut passages to discover, 120 burnout billboards to destroy and 50 super jumps to try. Each street has one time to beat and one crash amount to achieve. As you progress the game, you unlock up till 75 different cars. As you can now imagine, the single player experience can take you hours and hours and hours of fun, adrenaline and, of course, incredible destruction - this is Burnout, dude!
This time around, and due to the open world without menus concept there is no restart button when you fail an event. This was one of the most criticized issues in Burnout Paradise and, yes, it could have been implemented, but this is really not a big problem. You don't need to try and retry for the same event if you don't want to, except in burning routes which can turn your frustration levels a bit up if you constantly fail and have to return to the same place to try it again. The only remarkable complaint I have is the crash mode now called showtime that comes with some changes in the gameplay. Although being fun as well, it doesn't really make us forget the thrills of crash mode, after touch and impact time from older installements. All in all, this issue is not enough to spoil the experience of playing Burnout Paradise.
Cars are now divided into three different categories. Speed cars are fast but aren't very strong on impact and can only boost when burnout meter is completely full. But, if you boost continuously, you get consecutive burnouts, this means that if done correctly, you can boost indefinitely. These cars are suitable for races. Aggression cars are heavy but very resistant which makes them a good choice for marked man and road rage events. Stunt cars are in-between the other two categories, great for stunt run events, billboard crashes and overall city exploration.
Going online is as simple as a couple of presses in the d-pad and you're again set to hundreds of goals to be achieved. The host player of the game has an incredible amount of events to challenge other players, and those challenges vary according to the number of players in a game from two to eight. For instance, he can order every player to join in the baseball stadium or he can order all the players to get a certain drift distance or a certain amount of barrel rolls. Races can also be set online. All this events establish a new way of cooperative gaming, or not. You can go online just for the fun of pursuing and annoying another gamers. Online play is a wonderful experience with no lag at all and a solid use of the Bluetooth headset for online chat and the eye camera to send snapshots when a takedown occurs.
Visually speaking, this game has still no rival in the race games. Paradise is a glamorous city with beautiful landscapes and areas including costal, mountain, harbours, airfields beaches and many, many more. Car models are brilliantly detailed. You can really see the city's landscape reflecting in the shining car metal. Everything comes at a 60 frames per second without a single drop down even when million things are happening at the same time. Popups can be experienced but won't spoil the gameplay. Actually, in a large amount of hours I spent within the game, I've only witnessed it once. Regarding the crashes, they are awesome. The car really deforms naturally when crashing against objects sending debris and car parts everywhere. Every crash is a stunning piece of visual art.
The sound effects matches the graphics but the soundtrack, although not bad at all for a racing game, could be a bit better. DJ Atomika had the worst reviews out there but, not being the best voice in a game, for sure it's not the most annoying and I kind enjoy him. But, if you don't, you can turn it off.
Summing all this, Burnout Paradise is a rock solid arcade racing game that will boost your adrenaline each and every second. Burnout fans should not get disappointed, and even if you do, you should give it some time because it will grow on you, and the game definitely deserves it. A must have title.
Takedown!
The Best Burnout Yet ! January 31, 2008
Mrs. G. C. Brazier
17 out of 20 found this review helpful
I downloaded the demo off the psn network, and when i played it i thought it was ok. But then i got used to it and i really enjoyed.The demo was only a small part of what Burnout has to offer.Then the day it came out i bought it and i have not regretted it !
Some people may say that Burnout Paradise has gone the wrong direction because its not as explosive as burnout revenge and not as destructive. But their wrong !
Burnout Paradise is a huge open world with plenty to do and find with no load times.It is the deepest burnout yet. There is plenty to keep you busy. Such as the shear amount of stuff to find : 400 shortcuts,120 billboards to destroy,50 jumps,11 autoshops,14 gas stations,5 paint shops,5 junkyards and 120 events to do and 75 cars to unlock. It takes ages to find them all. I found over 230 shortcuts in 5 hours !
The handling on the cars is spot on now. Its very precise. You can now drift around corners with ease without slamming into a wall. As always the cars are extremely fast. But now you get information on them about if they are fast, strong and have a good speed boost or not. This helps you pick the car you want for the event you are doing.
There is 3 new events you can now do which is called bourning route. This involves just you and a 1 lap race against the clock.
The other event is masked man. this is similar to burning route but with black cars trying to ram you off the road and make you crash.
The last event is stunt run. This involves you driving a stunt car which you unlocked to beat the points target set for you. You can do this by using jumps stunts and by flatspinning your car.
The other events are the same as before. They are road rage and race.
When you do an event you are told at the start in clear english what event you are doing, then told ''you are here,(shown on a map your position) get to hear'' with a symbol on screen of where your marked destination is.
But the newest thing in the game is that you can choose you path through paradise city. This means there are no restrictions of where you can go. Its up to you !
Another new feature is when you are cruising round paradise city and you need your car fixed you can drive through an auto repair shop and it will instantly be fixed. You can also do this in races. The same applies for when you want a paint job, boost refill or to change you car in the junkyard.
The crashes are now better than ever and they are most realisic you will have ever seen in a game.
The speed and angle you hit a car damages your car in the direction you hit it. Eg hit the corner of a car youll make it roll through the air and down the street.
The crashes are very realistic. Your cars windscreen will smash apart, wheels will fly off and the car will be shrunken down to half the size it origionally was ! Unlike Burnout revenge when you crashed you had always wrecked your car, now not every crash can completely destrouy your car. You will be told on screen whether you car is 'wrecked' or you can 'drive away' freely like nothing ever happened. But if you do drive away the next crash you will have will almost certainly desroy your car.
The map is also quite eay to use, if a little small. When you racing and you need to turn a sharp corner that you probably wont notice your cars indication light flash left or right of where the turning will be.
The map also tells you the road you are on and the turns coming up which helps you go the right direction.
You dont always have to use this option if you have opened up a shortcut. Shortcuts can lead you to victory, so the more shortcuts you find, the more likely you are going to win the race.
Another new thing about completing events is that certain tasks can put extra cars you can win by driving through paradise city and spotting them. Then you have to take them down to win the cars.
Flatspinning is a new move you can do with your car. All you do is gain full speed when going up a jump or along a road an press the handbrake to spin your car.
Online you can free burn with up 2 2-8 players by beating their scores such as drifting, air time and the amount of rolls you can do in your car.
The playstation eye : You use this when you first start the game for your driving licence which you can put a picture of yourself on it. The driving license shows the grade you have. You improve your grade by winning events.
If you leave the camera in youre ps3 when youre playing on line and crash it will automatically take a picture of you and then show other players your picture.
Finally the graphics : The game runs at 720p HD and i must admit it gives a really sharp and detailed picture. It will still look really sharp on an lcd tv or standard.
Putting it simply. The best Burnout yet. Buy it. You will really enjoy it and wont regret it.
Elliot
Good... but my friends are real! February 24, 2008
darkfrankhs (London UK)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
i agree with most of the positive things said about this game in everyone else's reviews... Expansive, Beautiful, Fast, Fun. There is loads to do, and you can just pick up and play it.
Admittedly my Uni's internet connection isn't compatible with my PS3, so I have no internet play (argh!) But some of my favourite bits of burnout were playing with my mate NEXT to me, taking them down and vice versa would be hilarious. I bought this game and assumed it had split screen multiplayer, but it doesn't, I want to play racing games (motorstorm) on my PS3 with my REAL (by real I mean present in the room) friends.... Why can't we do this? A major benefit of a console is multiple people on one tv, that's why you get onw instead of a gaming PC, right? Has anyone ever had more fun playing a game online then Mariokart or Golden-eye 4-player? Maybe it's just me, but I like to talk and interact with real people during a game (headsets do not count!) I am not enjoying this new trend to 1 player console games....
 Too Complicated February 9, 2008
Mark C
10 out of 14 found this review helpful
I rented this game to see if it was worth buying it and I'm glad I did because I found that all the new stuff that's been added to the game has made it unplayable. Maybe I am too old for these sort of games now (37) but I've been playing racing games for a very long time and I thought Burnout 3 was the ultimate thrill ride.
Burnout 3 worked because it was simple. There are a lot of racing games out there and there's only so much you can do with the concept of 'racing', but the designers really distilled down all the vital elements in Burnout 3. They made it very very fast, extremely simple and totally insane - speeding down the wrong side of a 4 lane freeway at 190mph in a supercar and dodging oncoming traffic was just awesome. That's all there was to it, the only thing you had to concentrate on was that, and it made for a very intense gaming experience. Really there was very little they could do to improve on this, I think Burnout 3 was the perfect game and could only have been improved upon with better graphics, more variety of tracks, locations whatever, but they should have left the gameplay element alone. Crash mode in Burnout 3 was also one of my favourite games, I've played it at partys with 8 people, some non-gamers, who all thought it was fantastic fun.
The 'simplicity' idea was a good one and when the same team responsible for Burnout 3 applied the same concept to First Person Shooters they created another brilliant game 'Black'. This was also made better for the fact that all you had to do was shoot stuff - there was nothing complicated about it and the only thing you had to do was worry about shooting straight.
With Burnout Revenge they started to go off in the wrong direction and added things that detracted from the intensitity of the racing. Now with Burnout Paradise they have continued on this wrong path and added far too many distractions and removed most of the best bits of the game.
The fact that you can drive all over the island is irrelevant (anyway Test Drive Unlimited does this better with a real location of Hawai) and the idea of driving around looking for billboards to crash into isn't my idea of fun - they might as well add a game where you have to drive around a supermarket car park on a Saturday looking for a space. The 'collect-the-tokens' 'unlock-the-cars' approach to gaming is something I find extremely tedious, it's a chore, I play games to have fun - if I was into collecting things I'd become a Philatelist! That's what you find in all the other games and Gran Turismo does it much better anyway.
So with crash junctions and simple and fun gameplay gone out the window what have they replaced it with? Races where you get lost if you can't read the satnav (if I try to read the map while I'm driving I crash), a 'Showtime' mode which just looks like something from a stupid Mario-Brothers game and a sandbox style which, as with all the other games that have 'borrowed' from the GTA series, just ends up as a poor relation to the game its copied from.
They forgot to keep it simple, original and most importantly FUN! I will not be buying this game and don't can't even be bothered to play it for the 3 days I rented it.
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