A poorly executed good idea makes this burnout a step backward in my opinion.
Then Burnout Paradise was announced and I saw the first trailer and thought, hmm maybe this would be a good time to get into the series, its pretty popular so it must be good. So from then on I watched video after video, every review I could find and read up on every detail I could. Getting myself quite hyped for its release indeed. And then to hear it was 1 of 2 games developed for PS3 first and 360 second things seemed promising. And until recently I was amazed no one besides Yahtzee Crishaw(zero punctuation reviewer) picked up on the same issues I did.
Burnout Paradise was a good idea, a great idea in fact, who wouldn't want there own 'burnout world' to mess around in and generally speaking the game delivers but and heres where my overall opinion of the game goes downhill, it is THE most frustrating experience I've ever had in any racer ever.
Everywhere you go, everything you do occurs in this made up city. And in theory doing so at ridiculous speeds would be fun but when 99% of anything that is even slightly grazed by your vehicle at these speeds sends you into a glorious slow motion black and white ball of twisted metal death I for one get agitated. I played my friends copy of Burnout Revenge quite extensively and expected paradise to flatten it(in a 'fun' sense) but boy do I wish I had bought a copy of that game instead, and for that matter kept my 360 instead of giving it away but thats another story.
This game suffers due to the one thing that also makes it so much fun.
This enormous city. And as city's go not every corner is a smooth long curving road, no there are many MANY tight turns and many MANY protruding objects such as bridge pillars, jagged building corners, etc. Basically anything you would be use to finding in a city. But this is burnout.
Burnout is a game about driving at speeds equivalent in real life to a fighter craft or a space rocket. When you combine that speed with a 'gta like' city it just doesn't work. You spend the MAJORITY of your game time crashing.
And the fact you don't just crash but rather the entire sequence of crashing is dramatically drawn out makes it that much worse.
Add in thousands of npc vehicles that seem to ALWAYS be in the wrong place at the wrong time and it becomes a nightmare.
And thats just REGULAR driving, I haven't even gotten to the events.
In these you're expected to do just what you did in previous games, race, takedown opponents, whatever, your typical assortment of burnout events.
But they just don't work, not in this city, not in this game. The entire series of mechanics is broken because of this horrible horrible design choice.
And don't give me that 'just check your map, follow the signs on your hud' crap. No I that doesn't work and it doesn't fix the problem.
What would have easily fixed this and made the game worthy of a score above 9? Walls. JUST like in the older games. Bring back the invisible walls for the LOVE OF GOD please. It is the difference to me between a game that fails and a game that is crack in the form of digital entertainment.
And it wouldn't have been hard for them to do this either, EA did it with Need for Speed Most Wanted and Carbon and..., it hurts me to say this, did it WELL! Why didn't criterion do this? Did their testers never ever crash? Did they have the reflexes of a super human with a memory to match?
That brings me to another thing, Criterion's idea that we are capable of memorizing this ENTIRE CITY? What the F*** were they thinking with that?
Who has a memory as good as that? I play games for years and still get lost in there large worlds. I played wow for 2 and I still cant remember where all the inns are, how could I possibly remember every single corner, turn, object, shortcut, ramp and otherwise significant part of this games city?
Its just not going to happen. And they BUILT this game world thinking it would. The heads at criterion must have been smoking something thats for sure.
I almost returned my copy of burnout paradise but I am praying that at some point someone at criterion, hopefully along with many people like me informs them of the need for the walls and they implement them via a patch. And while they're at it, reduce the number of npc vehicles or at the VERY LEAST make these 2 things options.
I know thats probably just wishful thinking, they've made there game and they're probably too busy to have there artists, designers and programmers completely retune the game in order to add these elements.
Now ranting aside heres some positives. The game looks AMAZING and when I'm not crashing I'm having a ball, the speed, the takedowns are all just as glorious as ever but again I cant experience those wonderful things without this problem stampeding all over my fun.
I should note I also bought Burnout Dominator for my psp a few weeks before paradise released here in Australia and that game is wicked fun.
Its a shame their high def, 60 frames per second next gen offering isn't as fun. I'm sorry to say Criterion but I for one am disappointed and I can only hope that if you don't fix paradise you at least don't make the same mistake with the next sequel.
My advice to anyone yet to experience burnout? If you own a 360 get Revenge, its a budget price game now and it is in my opinion the best they've made yet. If however you don't own a 360 the PS2 and PSP versions of Dominator are excellent as well.
Oh and Atomica in Paradise is THE MOST ANNOYING PIECE OF S*** VOICE OVER IN ANY GAME EVER! KILL HIM WITH FIRE!
Man oh man did Criterion drop the ball with this game. Lol but not like my opinion matters, its already sold millions. Hell I bought a copy didn't I hah.
Ah well not like this is the only game thats been a huge disappointment to me recently, Halo 3 to name one.
Thanks for reading my rant review. Peace out.