From humble beginnings, the Burnout franchise has blasted through the ranks of the racing genre and established itself as the leader of the pack. The brand’s trademark formula of speed and aggression has evolved rapidly over the first four games, giving way to the popular crash mode, the takedown system and the introduction of traffic-checking, but Burnout Paradise represents the series’ biggest leap forward yet. The linear campaign has been replaced with a free-form sandbox for players to explore and interactive with at their discretion, and the end result feels like Crackdown with car crashes. Heavy emphasis on the “crack.” Gamers everywhere will have the chance to feel the adrenaline rush via a demo slated for December 13th, but we being the speed freaks that we are just couldn’t wait that long.
Paradise City is one of the largest game environments we’ve ever seen. The demo limits players to three districts – Motor City, Ocean View, and Big Surf Beach, a hell of a lot of road to explore but amazingly, still only about a tenth of the full city map. Despite its sheer size, what we explored of the city felt remarkably well laid-out. Somehow Criterion has managed to give every street and intersection the same amount of thought and polish as the comparatively minuscule individual tracks in Burnout Revenge. The streets of Paradise City are strewn with shortcuts and jumps, lined with all sorts of road-side deathtraps to hurl the competition into, and obviously they’re packed with traffic as well. Also noteworthy, Criterion have done a great job of giving each city district its own distinct aesthetic and filled each area with unique landmarks, both of which help players navigate through the sprawling environment without being forced to slow down and look at a map or pay attention to the street names that flash on the HUD at every intersection.
Unlike so many other open-world racing games that simply use the environment as a hub-world to traverse between races, Burnout Paradise actually puts the huge environment to good use. Triggering an event doesn’t lock players onto a blocked-off stretch of ‘track’ or even force them through a set of plotted checkpoints, it simply establishes a goal to achieve and gives players free reign to decide how best to complete the task. The demo includes samples of the race, stunt challenge and “burning route” events. The race and burning route events play out in similar fashion, as players are given a finishing line to aim for and not much else. Once they leave the starting grid, it’s up to the player to decide how to get from point A to point B. Obviously, the key difference between the two is that the race mode features four-wheeled competition while burning route is all about beating the clock, as such, the former has a bigger focus on battling back and forth with the competition while the latter is all about finding as many shortcuts as possible. The stunt challenge tasks players with accumulating 50,000 points in under two minutes by stringing together power-slides, jumps, tricks like barrel rolls, and crashing through destructible pieces of the environment like billboards or construction blockades. Without a finish line to work toward or other cars to take into account, the stunt challenge really pushes players to get creative within the environment.
Entering into these events is as simple as pulling up to a stoplight and pressing two buttons. There are no loading times so the entire process is quick and seamless. The demo is playable online as well, and starting up multiplayer events has been designed to be as quick and painless as possible. Everything from match creation and player invitations to searching for games is handled through the d-pad. The only online mode available in the demo is Freeburn, which basically allows up to four people to explore and generally screw around in the same instance of Paradise City outside of the structured events.
The underlying driving mechanics haven’t changed from Burnout Revenge, but it’s not like there was much room for improvement. The boost meter is still serves as the game’s backbone, and charging it up is still a matter of driving like a madman, weaving through traffic, driving on the wrong side of the road, catching air off of jump, and trading paint with the competition. Traffic-checking is back, but it actually feels like it belongs in the game this time around. Letting players check cars traveling in the same direction basically gave players a safe side of the road to retreat to in Burnout Revenge, which killed a lot of the tension that made races in Burnout 3 so intense. Now that the confined, linear tracks of Burnout Revenge have been replaced with an open city clogged full of civilian vehicles, that missing tension comes by way of other factors, like scrambling to find a shortcut and cut ahead of the competition taking a completely different route. Furthermore, players are going to spend a hell of a lot of time simply driving around Paradise City between events, and being forced to duck and weave between traffic the whole time would have been a major pain. As such, traffic-checking now feels like a necessity instead of a crutch. The controls are as tight as we’ve come to expect from the franchise, and the sense of speed is quite simply insane.
Fun as the events in Burnout Paradise are, it’s the freedom to explore and experiment within the environment between the events that makes the game feel like it’s shaping up into something special. Just like Crackdown, the game has enough structure to give players a feeling of progress when they want it, but most players will forgo completing the events for extended periods of time, opting instead to occupy themselves by testing the limits of their freedom within the world Criterion has created. Driving cars off ramps, throwing ourselves into traffic for the cathartic thrill of causing massive pile-ups, weaving through oncoming traffic while holding down the boost button just to see how long we can keep a sustained turbo going without slipping up. There’s so much to do in Paradise City, even when we’re intent on doing absolutely nothing. We’ve already had so much fun throwing just one car around just one tenth of Paradise City, we can’t wait to play the full game.
