Burnout Paradise changes the script for the franchise with the open city approach and it works well despite minor flaws.
Every time you boot up Burnout Paradise, you will hear Guns & Roses infamous song, Paradise City, and it definitely sets up the tone for the rest of the game. Driving around in Paradise City for the first time feels like you're just thrown in there and go nuts, but you are slowly guided by DJ Atomica, who returns to another EA game since SSX 3, and he will periodically help you out if you are not winning events. For seasoned Burnout fans, the core gameplay remains the same and minor changes were made to match the intensity of driving really fast within these city streets. Especially for fans of the last game, Revenge, traffic checking is basically gone as a major offense towards taking out the opposition while racing, but it is still in there if you're going slow. Signature takedowns are also out in exchange for new reasons to explore every detail of Paradise City.
Since Burnout has gone open world, the structured event system and circuit-based tracks are gone, and nearly every intersection is an event ranging from races, road rage, stunt runs, and marked man events. Stunt run is basically is a time limit event where you try to gather points from long combos of boosting, jumping, flat spins, barrel rolls, and breaking billboards. This mode is pretty much a test of memorization of shortcuts and billboard locations in deciding which route to do. Marked man also makes its debut in Paradise where it is basically a point-to-point run to finish surviving against black sedans with max strength ratings. Road rage is back again, but this time the whole city is the stage taking out car after car. Races are basically point-to-point to certain locations throughout the city (limited amount of finish lines). All these different events take advantage of the core gameplay of Burnout and they are fun to do. With the open city of Paradise at your disposal, one wrong turn will often lead to defeat as well as numerous crashes. Burnout routes are basically hot laps from previous games where specific cars are required to play these events. The opposing A.I. can be aggressive at times, but they tend to be conservative on the racing side as they will often crash to traffic giving players a chance to catch up if they are behind.
Burnout Paradise's major flaw to many fans is the no retry option. In the first half of the game, this is not that much of a flaw considering there is an event at nearly intersection. If you fail an event, there is probably another one just a second away. No restarts eventually become a flaw for those completionist types that want the Elite license, which is the primary goal of Paradise, as failing them and you to have to drive back there to try again. This alone makes the game frustrating at times and other ways of frustration is usually in stunt run, where one crash ends a combo.
The stars of Burnout Paradise are still the cars and there are fast ones out there. Depending on the crash, you can still drive away from it if it is not that bad other than wrecking. New to Paradise is a class system of cars where cars are assigned to aggression, stunt, or speed. Each class has its advantages and disadvantages. Aggression cars have the strength, but not the speed. Stunt cars are basically the middle class of the three as they can be aggressive with good speed and boost stats. Speed cars are unique from the other cars since the boost bar cannot be used till it is full and once the boost is all used up in one stretch, it starts a Burnout chain as seen in Burnout 1, 2, and Dominator. Continuous boosting equals more burnouts, but these cars are the lightest of the bunch and they tend to get lit by opposing cars quickly. Each type of event caters to these classes of cars as aggressive cars for road rages and marked man, stunt runs for stunt cars, and races for speed cars. It definitely gives Paradise some sense of strategy and balance and you can not just rely on one car to beat everything.
Other than the events, Burnout Paradise's single-player offers more ways to explore Paradise City. Scattered throughout the city are smashes that usually access shortcuts and hidden spots, billboards to break when jumping, and specific super jumps to fly through. Each street at Paradise City has its own road rule, not to be confused with that MTV show. Road rules are basically times that can be beaten once someone races at the beginning of the street to the end. In addition to road rule times, Showtime is another part of road rules, which is Paradise's version of crash mode. Showtime feels like you are creating your own multi-car accident by crashing with other cars for points and using the boost bar to magically move your car. Hitting buses in showtime increases the multiplier for more points. While showtime is not as good as the puzzle aspect of crash mode, it is a decent substitute. The single-player for Burnout Paradise can be beaten in about 20 hours, but it could take more than 30 hours for 100% Paradise CIty is just filled with so many things to do and it is simply fun doing everything it offers.
Other than single-player, the multiplayer for Burnout Paradise is truly something else. Accessing online is as simple as pressing the d-pad and you could be in a match in a matter of seconds. The online multiplayer alone offers a new set of challenges that can be done pending on how many players are in a room. These freeburn challenges are mostly easy and some offers teamwork. Doing these challenges with random people can often lead to miscommunication and often result in dropped players, so it is best to do them with friends. Other than freeburn challenges, races are basically the primary option for serious competition. Having no stunt run, team road rage from Revenge, and even team Marked Man makes the competitive online feel limited, so hopefully they would be added as future downloadable content later down the road. If you just want to go crazy in Paradise City, you can try to set records within the room so other players can try to beat such as oncoming, air, drift, etc. Despite no splitscreen multiplayer and who wants that anyway, the online for Burnout Paradise is something truly original and hopefully other games can learn from it.
Burnout Paradise is also arguably the best retail game to use the Xbox Live Vision or Playstation Eye camera at its full potential. Every time you win an event, you can take a picture of a winning pose for victory. For online, a picture is taken every time you win an event or get taken out for a mugshot. If you ever thought these cameras feel useless in actual games, Burnout Paradise makes them feel viable again and hopefully influences developers to use them at their full potential.
The graphics for Burnout Paradise offer the best for the arcade racing genre so far this generation. Paradise City as a whole looks so diverse and clean giving it a soul. The cars themselves look great when they are perfect or banged up. When you crash, the car sometimes slowly deforms, which is also a cool effect. The crashes as a whole just feel more insane than ever as they flip more and more. The filtering effects that tell the status of your car whether it is messed up or not are also amazing without some sense of a health bar. While it is not the best looking game on the 360 and PS3, the graphics fit Burnout's style and that is good enough for anyone looking for a good time.
The sounds of Paradise City can be a mixed bag. The sound effects cater with Burnout's style of the sense of speed as crashes sound like crashes and mean ones at best. Cars sound like cars and that's basically it for sound. DJ Atomica can be annoying at times, but he can be tolerable. The music on the other hand is where the mixed bag comes in. For most EA games, the licensed soundtracks are mostly hit and miss, which is true for Burnout Paradise. You can find your favorites here and there such as N.E.R.D's Rock Star remix or Faith No More's Epic, then there is your misses like Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend. Almost half of the soundtrack is recycled from Dominator and there are also original tunes from the first three Burnout games, but most of them are also misses. Luckily for the 360 version, custom soundtracks are in to bust out with your own tunes.
Burnout Paradise was Criterion's chance to innovate the racing genre again and they have succeeded. While some would still want the core structured-like gameplay to come back, the core gameplay is still as good and fun as it was. It still provides the best sense of speed within the genre as previous games have offered as well as bringing back the intensity that Burnout 3 established with the elimination of traffic checking being overpowered. The online aspect is among the best multiplayer experiences now in this generation and everything is done with no menus and load times. While slightly flawed, Burnout Paradise is a technical achievement for this generation of games.