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"Ghosts Can't Die!"
Regular
on 05/08/2009 at 7:21:25PM
Total Posts: 256 |
The Burnout series has defined itself as one full of immense speed, everlasting drifts and more importantly amazing crashes. While each has offered something new and made exciting changes to the already excellent formula, lately the series has seemed to be lacking any new direction. Enter Burnout Paradise, where the new direction... is any direction you want.
That’s right instead of selecting individual tracks via a menu, you can now drive around an entire city tackling missions in any order and at any rate you wish. On paper it sounds very impressive with the city consisting of endless streets, shortcuts and jumps but it isn’t without its hiccups.
Burnout Paradise is very much an arcade racer. You’ll be speeding through crowded streets, drifting round corners and looking for shortcuts at every chance you get. Very rarely will you hold the brake for long. While finding the safest route is always key, taking risks also rewards you with boost. Try barely missing cars, drifting for long periods of time or jumping over ramps you find and you’ll find your boost bar rising. Using this will cause everything to go blurry and the streets to go flying by. It’s sort of a risk/reward system. Do you try to handle the extra speed and go zooming on, or opt for control over velocity? Of course whatever you pick you’re going to crash eventually and with the extra power of the 360 the crashes truly are the best around in any racer.
Scattered throughout the city are several missions. You have the usual races but also a few neat additions too. One will have you trying to get a specific score via performing stunts and stringing along combos, another will have you trying to make it from one point to another without being taken out by evil black cars along the way and another see how many racers you can take out in a certain time limit. They are good fun; however you’ll often find yourself repeating the same ones again and again on the same streets time and time again. The only difference is the change in difficulty.
Another problem is in the actual racing portion of the game. Sure it’s great fun, but can prove frustrating especially when finding which route to take to get to the finish. The indicators that show which turn to take don’t tell you when you’ll approach them and with the speed you’re going it’s too tough to read the small map and watch the road at the same time. Maybe Criterion should have had a linear route to follow rather than given too much choice.
Completing said challenges will unlock even faster cars and it can often prove exciting to uncover a new vehicle as you progress further and further. If you get fed up of challenges though you can search for jumps, billboards and gates throughout the city of which there are hundreds. If that isn’t what you want then you can try time trials on each of the sixty four streets or try causing as much damage in a crash on them. And once you’ve had enough of the lone experience you can go online almost immediately via a handy in game menu. Here you can try races and other games as well as simply drive around freely with friends. Criterion have even thrown in around five hundred missions to tackle which can be as simple as drive to the baseball stadium or tougher ones that may see you and seven others barrel roll a bridge.
The city itself is incredible. You can speed through the mountainous areas, coast along the beach passing Ferris wheels or go through downtown complete with flashing lights and huge signs. You’re bound to find your favourite spot in Paradise and with the downloadable night patch available for free on Live you can experience these places at night on the empty roads. Speaking of the patch, you’ll also get motorbikes to try out which is good fun as well as a restart button. Now you can actually choose to restart any event if it’s not going well whereas before you had to drive back to the starting location. A must if you don’t want to get frustrated.
Visually Paradise City looks stunning. With no load times when driving around you can go from one side of the beautiful city to the other seamlessly without so much as a pause. The cars too are very detailed with each offering a unique look and feel to them. The soundtrack will appeal to those who like their rock and punk music but those who hate it will obviously not be impressed. I for one love it and the selection is really good including Guns and Roses, Seether and other great bands. The cars roar and screech and crashes sound brutal and loud but one thing that will annoy it is the DJ. He repeats what he says way too often and just sounds plain awful.
While I admire Criterion for venturing into an open world type game, in some areas, it just doesn’t suit Burnout. But what you have here is a game full of cars, secrets, objectives and many many online missions to complete that I’m sure you will be spending a lot of your time in this city.
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Ghost Killer
"Ghosts Can't Die!"
Regular
on 05/08/2009 at 7:21:25PM
Total Posts: 256
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The Burnout series has defined itself as one full of immense speed, everlasting drifts and more importantly amazing crashes. While each has offered something new and made exciting changes to the already excellent formula, lately the series has seemed to be lacking any new direction. Enter Burnout Paradise, where the new direction... is any direction you want.
That’s right instead of selecting individual tracks via a menu, you can now drive around an entire city tackling missions in any order and at any rate you wish. On paper it sounds very impressive with the city consisting of endless streets, shortcuts and jumps but it isn’t without its hiccups.
Burnout Paradise is very much an arcade racer. You’ll be speeding through crowded streets, drifting round corners and looking for shortcuts at every chance you get. Very rarely will you hold the brake for long. While finding the safest route is always key, taking risks also rewards you with boost. Try barely missing cars, drifting for long periods of time or jumping over ramps you find and you’ll find your boost bar rising. Using this will cause everything to go blurry and the streets to go flying by. It’s sort of a risk/reward system. Do you try to handle the extra speed and go zooming on, or opt for control over velocity? Of course whatever you pick you’re going to crash eventually and with the extra power of the 360 the crashes truly are the best around in any racer.
Scattered throughout the city are several missions. You have the usual races but also a few neat additions too. One will have you trying to get a specific score via performing stunts and stringing along combos, another will have you trying to make it from one point to another without being taken out by evil black cars along the way and another see how many racers you can take out in a certain time limit. They are good fun; however you’ll often find yourself repeating the same ones again and again on the same streets time and time again. The only difference is the change in difficulty.
Another problem is in the actual racing portion of the game. Sure it’s great fun, but can prove frustrating especially when finding which route to take to get to the finish. The indicators that show which turn to take don’t tell you when you’ll approach them and with the speed you’re going it’s too tough to read the small map and watch the road at the same time. Maybe Criterion should have had a linear route to follow rather than given too much choice.
Completing said challenges will unlock even faster cars and it can often prove exciting to uncover a new vehicle as you progress further and further. If you get fed up of challenges though you can search for jumps, billboards and gates throughout the city of which there are hundreds. If that isn’t what you want then you can try time trials on each of the sixty four streets or try causing as much damage in a crash on them. And once you’ve had enough of the lone experience you can go online almost immediately via a handy in game menu. Here you can try races and other games as well as simply drive around freely with friends. Criterion have even thrown in around five hundred missions to tackle which can be as simple as drive to the baseball stadium or tougher ones that may see you and seven others barrel roll a bridge.
The city itself is incredible. You can speed through the mountainous areas, coast along the beach passing Ferris wheels or go through downtown complete with flashing lights and huge signs. You’re bound to find your favourite spot in Paradise and with the downloadable night patch available for free on Live you can experience these places at night on the empty roads. Speaking of the patch, you’ll also get motorbikes to try out which is good fun as well as a restart button. Now you can actually choose to restart any event if it’s not going well whereas before you had to drive back to the starting location. A must if you don’t want to get frustrated.
Visually Paradise City looks stunning. With no load times when driving around you can go from one side of the beautiful city to the other seamlessly without so much as a pause. The cars too are very detailed with each offering a unique look and feel to them. The soundtrack will appeal to those who like their rock and punk music but those who hate it will obviously not be impressed. I for one love it and the selection is really good including Guns and Roses, Seether and other great bands. The cars roar and screech and crashes sound brutal and loud but one thing that will annoy it is the DJ. He repeats what he says way too often and just sounds plain awful.
While I admire Criterion for venturing into an open world type game, in some areas, it just doesn’t suit Burnout. But what you have here is a game full of cars, secrets, objectives and many many online missions to complete that I’m sure you will be spending a lot of your time in this city.
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