Lots of crashing.... Cars crashing, that is.
The story in the game is that there's no story. After an overly long and boring AND unskippable intro you are thrown into Paradise City. There's nothing on the map, not yet, as events and locations get marked on your map as you discover them by driving next to them. In the game, there's only one objective: Raise your license level by winning events. After you level up your license, by getting X amount of wins, every event you cleared is now refreshed and you can do it again. This could've been repetitive. but thanks to the fact that you are upgrading your car, your rival cars change AND the fact that there are not set routes for any race... it doesn't.
While the overall gameflow is completely different, the rest of the game does play like Burnout 2. It's an Arcade racer, so no Automatic/Manual transmission garbage, just hold down the accelerator and have fun. Steering your car is buttery smooth, and nailing down drifts is very easy. There's also Nitro, and you charge it by being a nutjob, driving on the opposing lane, drifting, driving close to other cars without hitting them, etc. While Nitro makes you go faster, it's still very manageable, so you can turn without much hassle. I absolutely adore the way driving a car in this game feels.
While the crashing is not as emphasized as it was in Burnout 2, man, the crashes in this game are spectacular, a lot of love went into deforming the cars as the collide against the environment or other cars. And it plays out in slow motion, it's a thing of beauty.
There are multiple event types: Marked Man, in which you must get from point A to B without getting wrecked by cars trying to destroy you, basic get from point A to B races, Stunt Races, which are about points, Takedown Races in which you must take down X amount of cars and Burning Routes, which require specific cars and unlock an enhanced version of that car. There are no traditional lap races, and the beauty of this game being open world... is that there's no set route for the A-to-B races, so you can go any which way you feel is better. I really liked that, even if a lot of my routes costed me the race!
I found the game to be fairly addicting. Just after I finish a event, I'd drive next to another and start it, and maybe I'd lose the next one, drive to retry it, but come across a new one, and do that one instead, etc etc. Even though I lost races a fair amount of times... I still wanted more. If there's one big issue is that there's no quick retry. It kinda sucks, 'cause most races take you from one corner of the map to another, so driving back, shamefully, to the starting point just to retry can be annoying. You can't place waypoint on the map either, and there's no quick travel to add to the annoyance.
As you win races you'll get notified that X car is now roaming the streets. If you find them and make them crash you get their car. You can usually spot them quite easily as they'll be the only vehicles zipping around streets, as opposed to the more normal vehicles that respect the laws of transit.
Besides events, there are four types of buildings of interest for you to find. Junkyards, where you can swap your vehicle, repair stops that can repair it(Even mid-race!), fuel stations, that restore your Nitro(Even mid race too!) and Paint Shops. Something that annoyed me is that the paint job is random, so you have to drive in and out of the store until you get something you like. That said, once you fix a new car for the first time, you can just pick a paintjob from the car select screen.
The game includes all the DLC from the getgo, which includes bikes, a new Island and... overpowered cars. In a way, it's nice to have them, so that if the game gets too hard you could rely on them. But the game is fairly easy, I mean, I'm horrible at racing games yet managed to get by just fine, but since there's no difficulty setting I appreciate giving players options.
As for the Island, Surf Island feels very different from the rest of the game, as most objectives are based on lapping around different parts of the island by hitting checkpoints. Also, the difficulty expects you to have reached at least the Burnout License, so this is better left for last, after you've gotten used to the game.
One final thing that disappointed me is that there's no splitscreen. I get it, since this is an open-world driving game with no lap-races, a two-player mode would've meant altering parts of town to turn them into race tracks as well as a ton more extra work that was probably out of the budget... but having a racing game with no splitscreen is just wrong.
Well.... it seems I really loved Burnout Paradise! Truth is, I knew I loved the game after I turned it on, just to give it a look... yet kept playing it. Constantly. The game is very addictive, and while it could have used a few additions for convenience's sake, the game is so entertaining that I didn't really mind not having a quick retry or restart.
9.0
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