Burnout Paradise (Xbox 360)

Who wants to go fast? Let's see a show of hands, people.
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 3 of 3

Beyond that, there are 400 Do Not Enter/Private Property fences through which to crash, billboards through which to smash, and Super Jumps to discover, and you can always go online via the game's seamless offline-to-online interface. You can gather friends or rivals (eight total) via the Net, setting up group events or working through the game's dullish online "challenges." (Fellow Crispyite Evan Narcisse and I completed a few of these challenges, one of which involved us spending about 15 minutes driving to a specific bridge in the game, then trying to get our timing right so we could collide in midair. Let's just say that no one, not even my own mother, would be proud of me for completing this challenge.)

Paradise gets off to a terrific start, making it the most accessible game in the series. After only a few hours of gameplay, you'll have a garage full of vehicles and a good percentage of the game under your belt. The stinginess and frustrating moments that vexed previous Burnouts -- in particular, Burnout 3: Takedown and the PS2-only Burnout: Dominator (neither of which did I finish) -- have largely been expunged. There are far fewer of the drive-perfectly-or-start-again Burning Route events. Having a wider range of events from which to choose does help resolve that issue. But beyond that, it feels like there's a more gentle ramp-up in difficulty in Paradise, as opposed to the frustrating challenge spikes that were commonplace in the previous games.

Regarding the game's controls, my hands fought a bit more with the Xbox 360 controller than they did with the PS3's DualShock, namely because the 360 controller is bigger and heavier, and the buttons -- especially that right trigger (which you will be holding down for hours on end) -- feel starched. If you're playing the game on the 360, plan on having to fight through the occasional hand cramp now and then. And since I'm in compare/contrast mode, the visual differences between the PS3 version running in 720p versus the Xbox 360 version running in 1080i are -- drumroll, please -- negligible. Maybe I'm due for an eye exam, but I honestly could not see any remarkable differences between the two. If I had to pick one, I'd go with the 360, solely because I have a more substantial Friends list on Xbox Live than I do on PSN, and because I want those damn Achievement Points for my Gamer Score. (I'll get the 10-point Spinnin' Around Achievement -- perform a 360 flatspin in any car -- if it's the last thing I do.)

In the end, none of Paradise's flaws prove to be fatal. A bit more event variety would have been nice, sure, but from start to finish, the whole thing cruises along so smoothly that it's nearly impossible not to be seduced by the game.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.