360Sync Takes Down Burnout Paradise

Yes, this is a tad late, seeing as Burnout Paradise has been out for over a month (released January 21st), but I’ve been a busy, busy person. Now, no more excuses; onto the review. Burnout Paradise is the latest addition to the ever popular Burnout series from Criterion Games. Situated in Paradise City, this one, differs greatly from the rest: it features a sandbox (open-world) concept much like Crackdown, Grand Theft Auto and more importantly, Test Drive Unlimited. New-comers to the series will most likely really enjoy the game, while gamers that have played previous iterations of the franchise will surely notice a very big difference. Bare with me, this is my first review and it is also quite the lengthy one; it does discuss just about every aspect of Burnout Paradise. To continue on and read the whole review hit Read More.

Graphics

The graphics department in games is usually one of the first things players look at while evaluating a title. So, why don’t we cover that first? Visually, this game is absolutely stunning; the draw distance is incredibly far, and it almost rivals that of Crackdown. The buildings, high-rises, highways and country-side make for a completely encompassing and engulfing experience while the car models are extremely detailed, and the reflections on them are very life-like. [Minor unlockable spoiler] Once the gold and platinum paint-jobs are unlocked, the reflections take on a whole new meaning! [Spoiler End]

Crashing into the traffic of Paradise City. Thanks to TeamXbox for the screenshot.

Let’s move on to the crashes. The Burnout series was made popular because of its ultra-realistic crashes. Well, with this new iteration, the crashes are even more spectacular: every body panel can be scratched, damaged and even torn off. One of the awesome things to see is your car after it suffered a slow roll-over causing a caved in roof. The result? A true “chopped-top” car. In closing, the graphics in Burnout Paradise make the game ultra-realistic and really immersive.

Gameplay

One of the deciding factors about how much a gamer enjoys a game is the gameplay element. Burnout Paradise features a very similar crash formula to the previous iterations of the franchise albeit, with a couple major and minor changes. The open world concept of Burnout Paradise is new to the Burnout Franchise. Burnout Paradise features several “modes:” the transition between these modes is very seamless, so the change can barely be noticed. Online and offline Freeburn, you’ll likely spend most of your time here, are the “cruising” modes, where you get to drive around the world exploring at your own leisure. Then you have your online and offline events. Online Freeburn and events will be discussed in the Xbox Live section below.

Let’s go into more depth about offline Freeburn: it is your offline “single-player” mode where you can drive around the city, mash up traffic and your car, as well as discover unlockables like “drive-thrus” and your collection items. There are several types of “drive-thrus” (places where you can get things done to your car): Junkyards, Auto Repairs, Paint Shops and Gas Stations. All of these “drive-thrus” can be accessed during events, except for the Junkyard, for which you must be in either offline or online Freeburn. You’ve also got your collection items, which there are a whole lot of: Billboards, Smashes and Super Jumps. I won’t detail what each one is about, as it doesn’t really pertain to the review, but I will say that all of the drive-thrus and collection items are seamlessly integrated into the game, whether online or offline, or while you’re in Freeburn or one of the various events.

Jumping the Hunter Manhattan through one of the many Billboards throughout Paradise City. Thanks to TeamXbox for the screenshot.

The events are where you make real and useful progression on the game, unlocking various cars by acquiring a license or having the car show up on the streets for you to take down and keep. Events include races, marked man’s, road rages, stunt runs and burning routes and each one that you beat gets you a mark on your license. Enough marks, and your license gets upgraded. The progression is also well integrated into the whole system of Burnout Paradise, where an insufficient license in the single player can hinder your performance in the online gaming front.

One thing a Burnout game must have are spectacular crashes. And that, Burnout Paradise does beautifully. In the vast majority of cases, the crashing algorithms work perfectly, in terms of crash physics, damage to the car, damage to other cars and destruction of the environment. However, sometimes the crash algorithm will initiate a crash even though it was seemingly completely unnecessary and uncalled-for. This is where one of my first minor problems with the game arises. When you can’t make a large sweeping corner or you just don’t want to take the road, what do you do in a Burnout game? You grind the exterior wall of the turn. However, sometimes a simple wall that is seemingly perfect for for grinding on, will at seldom random moments have a “rough edge” of sorts that will send you into a crash. This can be somewhat frustrating during a close event, like a race or a marked man where every second can be crucial to whether you get the win or not. Other than that minor problem, the crashing looks and feels gut-wrenching (in a good way).

Burnout Paradise also sports cars with 3 different boost styles: Stunt, Speed and Aggression. Stunt-boost cars refill their boost meter the quickest by doing stunts: jumps, near misses, and acrobatics, but if you crash doing one of these things, you’ll lose most if not all of your boost. Speed cars, refill their boost best by going fast, especially when going in oncoming traffic, but the boost has to be full to be activated, meaning you can’t activate it whenever you want. Aggression cars refill their boost by traffic checking and taking other cars down, but if you’re taken down in an aggression car, you loose your boost-multiplier. All the cars and boost types are really well balanced, each type takes some getting used to and all 3 types have their advantages and disadvantages.

Showing off the sheer size of Paradise City. See how driving from one end to the other might be a bit of a hassle if you fail?

Finally, to just emphasize something that bothered me at the beginning of the game but became less important as I progressed through the game, was the lack of a retry function. If you lose an event or mess it up badly, up can easily quit out of the event: just stop your car for a couple seconds and you’ll get take out of the event. However, if you want to specifically do that event again, you will have to drive all the way back to the intersection where you started the event. This, in the beginning can be quite aggravating, but as you progress you realize that it really doesn’t matter what events you complete (except for the burning routes) until you get your Burnout Paradise license. Plus, the crew over at Criterion said this is one of the things they decided to do for the game early in development, and it won’t change with this title.

Sound

This game doesn’t have much to talk about in terms of sound. It’s like just about every other racing game in terms of sound. However, if you listen closely, you’ll hear that some cars have in excess of 7 or 8 gears, which is a bit odd, but still acceptable nonetheless. The cars in most cases have relatively unique exhaust sounds, while you always get an even higher pitch screaming at you when boost is engaged. The crashes also sound very realistic, especially when they get slowed down and you get to hear the metal crumpling under the forces of physics.

Achievements

This game has a very clean set of achievements. First to note is that single player achievements are denoted by an orange background on the achievement picture while the multiplayer achievements have a grey background. With a total of 50 achievements, 35 are allocated to the single-player while 15 are in multiplayer. The single-player are awarded for getting license upgrades, accomplishing random feats like double-barrel rolls and a 360° flat-spin, as well as completing the collection quests. The online are mostly there for being introduced to the features of online, although getting 250 of the online challenges is quite a feat with the reliability of the EA Servers. My only beef with the achievements are the 2 that require you to have a Vision camera, which means you have to buy a ridiculously overpriced webcam, for use with the 360. Other than that, the achievements are very well balanced and set some good goals for players of all skill levels. Completionists will of course want to get all of them.

Xbox Live Multiplayer and Online Features

Burnout Paradise has a loads of functionality for online play. First, you have your Online Freeburn which is where you can invite friends and recent players, as well as random people can join your game. The host has complete control of what the room does: they can change the access from Open to Friends/Recent to Invite only at any time during the game; they can choose which challenges they want to do (determined by how many players are in the room), as well as initiate a Player race. However, if the host wants to play Ranked races, they can open up a room, to which only random players are allowed to join; no invitees and no friends (unless they find the host by accident or through a custom search). This is obviously to prevent one of the worst things online: cheating. Burnout Paradise protects really well against cheating in ranked matches, but there is no substitution for lack of skill or a weaker car. On numerous occasions, I’ve had players come after me online while I’m using the Hunter Citizen, one of the heaviest and most durable cars it the game, only to get taken down in almost every case.

The Carson Steel Wheels GT can only be unlocked via a code in the Sponsor Product Codes section. Search for it on Google, there are tons of valid codes. (They don’t expire when used. There are separate codes for the North American [NTSC] and European [PAL] versions of BP.)

Online events can be accessed and started from an in-game menu that pops up by pressing right on the D-pad. Navigation through the menus is painless, but can become a bit of a hazard while weaving through oncoming traffic on the highway. All the connecting to other players is relatively seamless with only a several-second screen of “Connecting to Paradise City servers.” There have been noted problems with this screen on the 360 hanging because of a timeout error, but that will be fixed in the next patch. The online multiplayer, whether co-oping with up to 7 other people for challenges, cruisin’ around the city with friends, or battling it out for top spot on the ranked leaderboards is really, really fun and will keep most players coming back for more servings of boosting and crashing.

However, the fun stops on the technical side of things. As we all know, EA chooses to be the only publisher to be “special” and have their own gaming servers unlike the rest of the Xbox Live service. Because of this, disconnected players and hosts are frequent happenings. Disconnected hosts don’t happen too often, but when they do, almost everyone comes back angry about how crappy the EA servers are. Disconnected players happen very often and frankly should be expected at least at about 15-20 minute intervals. There’s nothing worse in this game than these two things:

• Doing a difficult challenge where almost everyone is done, one player gets disconnects and the whole challenge fails because of this
• Playing a ranked race, only to get booted from the game by the servers, causing a “quit” to show up under the race and your rank decreasing significantly

This is where my biggest problem with the game lies. If it had the stellar connection as that of Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Forza Motorsport 2 or just about any other non-EA title on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, this game would be a force to be reckoned with. Sadly, EA has let both Criterion and Burnout Paradise down by enforcing their sad policy of using the EA servers. Hopefully, in due time EA will realize how stupid this policy is on Xbox Live and will go back to the way everyone else does it. Other than this huge limitation and disappointment, the multiplayer aspect is phenomenally well done.

DLC

As of now, downloadable content for this game has been spoken about but not officially announced: plenty of cars and a series of bridged-islands. The next DLC “pack” will feature at least one new car and an island for players to access. In order to not divide the community with this DLC, Criterion has commented on how they will achieve (no pun intended) this. Simple, anyone that does not have the DLC will not be able to access the island. The Criterion Games website has details about the upcoming DLC, along with a video of some of the new car liveries and one of the new cars. Check out the website for the latest information on Burnout Paradise DLC.

Conclusion

Overall, Burnout Paradise is very similar to its siblings in one respect: it’s damn good. While there are some minor and major problems with the game and it’s publisher, the rest of the game plays extremely well and is great fun. For your $60 you’re definitely getting your money’s worth. If you like racing and/or crashing, you’ll love this title from Criterion Games.

I’m always up for some fun in Burnout Paradise. If you’re new and want someone to show you around, or you just want to game, send me a message on Xbox Live and I’ll surely come and game.

If you have any comments, questions or anything else you want to say, drop me a comment below!