Burnout: Paradise Demo Impressions
When Burnout: Paradise first hit my radar I was cautiously optimistic. Burnout is one of the few racing series that I still care about and I figured Paradise was going to be nothing more than a reincarnation of Burnout: Revenge because, well, it’s EA. Boy, did Criterion prove me wrong. This is them at their finest – taking risks, innovating, and shutting people up.
The first time the Paradise demo boots there’s a 15 second load, give or take a few, and from that point forward there are no loading breaks to be found at any point in time beyond the initial load. I may be mistaken but I believe that this is a feat that has yet to be completely implemented in an open world game (I’m looking at you and your tunnels THAW).
Immediately you’re greeted by the informative (albeit annoying) DJ Atomica and are instructed to get the engine running on the rusted piece of junk that has just been handed to you. Then there you go, free to do pretty much whatever you want throughout a fraction of Paradise City that is handed to you.
The first thing that is as clear as day is that this iteration of Burnout has done away with menus altogether. Wanna go online? Press right on your d-pad and invite some friends over. Wanna start a race? Pull RT+LT (or R2+L2) at an intersection, and you get a little information about the path of carnage that you’re about to traverse, and off you go.
Within the little bit of Paradise that you’re granted, you can do a stunt run, 2 races, a new crash mode, and 9 online challenges.
As far as the races go, it’s classic Burnout in all its traffic check, takedown glory. Stunt run, as one would imagine, is a timed event in which you are to chain burnouts, jumps, barrel rolls, and anything else that resembles an action that would be supremely illegal should you go out and try it in your Ford F-150.
The jury is out on the new crash mode, Showtime, which isn’t available in the demo. I guess they figured it would take away too much from the actual game.
As far as the online challenges go, I can’t speak too subjectively of them as I couldn’t get a group going, but for what it’s worth it seems like Criterion is going with the ‘everything is more fun in co-op’ mindset. Paradise also includes competitive events as well in the form of races, stunt runs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had more up their sleeve.
Paradise is shaping up to be the best racing game since super simmy Forza 2. If you need me you can find me here impatiently waiting for the January 22nd release of Burnout: Paradise. Hopefully by then I can find something wrong with it.
