I'm torn, the game is good but it makes me want to play the previous Burnout games.
Now that I've played it for a couple hours I'm kind of torn. On one side it looks fantastic and has the same feel for speed that the previous incarnations had. The crashes as always with this series look fantastic, a near miss collision gi ves you that rollercoaster ride thrill that is hard to top.
One the other side when playing the game I can't fight off the urge to pop Burnout Revenge into my old x-box (I never got the 360 version of Revenge or I likely would have).
There have been a lot of complaints about the open world nature of Paradise and the fact that there is no shortcut to get to a race or junkyard. It is annoying that when you want to switch cars you have to find a junkyard in real-time but I can live with that. I was never so irritated that I didn't want to play anymore. There are now different kinds of cars which change the way you get boost (aggression cars get more by being aggressive, stunt by doing jumps and tricks and the ever so annoying speed cars can only use boost when the meter is full). I can live with the different cars too.
What I find the most irritating thing about the game is that it is way too easy to get lost during races, the entire city of Paradise is open, the races are not blocked off to keep you on track. In order to know when to turn during a race you either have to pay a lot of attention to the compass which for me at least often leads me to crashing because my full attention is not on the road in front of me (a good lesson for the kids I guess-always keep your eyes on the road). The other option is to constantly switch back to the map, again annoying.
Crash mode is also gone in Paradise, I miss it. The replacement Showtime mode is just plain stupid. At any time you can send your car into a ridiculous spin which you can pinball down the road for virtual miles trying to crash into as many cars as possible. It is kind of amusing the first time but after that is is just dumb. Crash mode had its faults but was a lot more fun.
I appreciate that the developers wanted to do something different with this game and not just duplicate the past versions but they took some of the things that made the earlier games so much fun out of the game.
Paradise is still a lot of fun to play, it isn't just a great looking game that gets boring after ten minutes (like say Assassin's Creed) but I can't help but feel slightly dissapointed with it. If I hadn't played the previous two Burnout games then I would probably not have these qualms about Paradise.