Burnout Paradise Demo

I just wanted to rave a little bit about a new demo that’s been released on the Xbox 360 - Burnout Paradise.

Burnout is a longstanding racing franchise that is known for it’s adrenaline pumping action and chaotic destruction. I’ve played previous games in the series a bit but never really got into it, Paradise has changed up the formula and I really like the new feel.

Though open-ended environments have ruined some games in the past (Need For Speed Underground 2), it happens to work really well in my favorite Xbox 360 game, Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Burnout Paradise feels like it takes NFS:MW to the next level with beautiful graphics, tons of stunt-style action, a plethora of exploration bonuses, and a destruction model that trumps anything else out there.

The crashes just have to be seen to be believed.

Not everyone agrees with the franchise change to an open-world environment… Matt Brett sums it up with:

Burnout Paradise, A Great Franchise Ruined

If this demo is any indication of what’s in store for the final game (and it mostly like is since the game ships in just over a month), Burnout Paradise suuucks!

I can see some of his concerns but I think the demo simply has a learning curve.

(...my comment on mattbrett.com)

My initial play-through left me pretty much with the same opinion, even though I have never owned a previous Burnout game (nor played one for more than 10 minutes). However, being obsessed with destruction as I am, I played it far longer than I would have just to watch my car beautifully explode in several different ways.

Eventually I got bored with that (sort of) but but that point had actually learned a bit of the map and wanted to try out some of the events. The events again left me with somewhat of a stale taste in my mouth, the “Stunts” mode I ended up with a similarly low score of something like 4,000 points to the 50,000 required. However after trying all these events over you begin to catch the knack required and at a certain point the events “click.”

Another thing that I think the demo fails to illustrate well is that there are events EVERYWHERE in the game. You don’t notice them much as most of them are disabled in the demo, but basically every single stoplight in the game is an event of some sort.

I definitely agree that the lack of a “restart event” option is sorely lacking, but I absolutely love the open sandbox environment and really see this as the only big down-side, the rest being more of sharp learning curve.

And as for the “stunts” mode… the key is to know how to add multipliers to your score (big air, smashing billboards, corkscrews, etc) and knowing how to chain stuff together. It is simple to chain as you cruise from one ramp-rich area to another simply by tapping the turbo button and keeping an eye on the little count-down clock (which tells you when a combo chain is about to be broken). After a few tries I’ve gotten combo scores of close to 200,000 points without too much effort.

And as others have mentioned… this game is gorgeous and the crashed and wrecks are a sight to be seen.

Be sure to download it and let me know what you think. And if you love it as I do, make sure to let Matt Brett know just how wrong he is. ;)