I'm usually a proponent of finishing a game (or close to it) before reviewing it or talking shit about it. However, in this case I'll make an exception, because I can't remember the last time I was this bored by a game. This review is based on about 5-6 hours of playtime, so if someone has gotten further along and can attest to the game undergoing significant changes later on they are more than welcome to correct me.
Now, let's get down to business! Burnout Paradise is the latest game in the Burnout series. This long running racing series was never one to focus too much on realism, instead opting for easy access and solid gameplay. While I'm not a big racing fan, I indulge in the genre and Burnout games (especially Burnout 3 on PS2) were always a welcome sight whenever one of my friends brought a console over. I was quite happy to hear that the latest installment of the series was coming to the PC as well and went out to rent it as soon as it came out. Unfortunately, I was in for an unpleasant suprise...
The game takes place in the titular Paradise City, which is open to your explorations at all times. You can freely cruise all over the city and its surrounding areas, unlocking events and cars, finding secrets and collectables and generally messing around. At every intersection you can start one of the events in categories such as Race, Road Rage (take out opposing cars), Marked Man (survive to the finish line), etc. These events start almost seamlessly and only the start and (perhaps) finish lines are preset, you can take any route you want. Winning events upgrades your driver's licence which gives you access to new cars and there are dozens of events for you to find and try out. Sounds pretty great so far, right?
Well, this is where the whole thing starts falling apart faster than a leper in a tornado. First of all, Paradise City isn't all that big to begin with. What's worse, it's not interesting either. It's mostly gray, with some gray and metallic gray highlights. Some splotches of color can be seen, but they are an exception. The city in Prototype looks more interesting. Sure, you can go out of the city, but then it's just mostly shit-brown with green highlights. The whole point of open world games is to have an open world worth exploring. Oblivion had this same problem, only Burnout Paradise takes it to a new level of blandness.
The events system is broken. It's hard to tell one event from another (except the general category), they all play the same and since the city is so boring - they ARE the same. Not to mention that if you want a bit of variety, you'll have to drive to the other end of the city, which means just a ton of faffing about instead of actually racing. Sure, there are "collectables" to find along the way, but unless you find smashing through yellow fences a fulfilling activity, it's not going to help much.
The car selection was disappointing. Burnout never licenced actual car brands and instead opted for ripping off the existing brands and giving them alternative names. I can understand that, but the selection I encountered was awful. Cars either look like crap or are painted candy colors with badly designed decals and graphics. The damn things look like toys instead of racing cars. Except the hillbilly truck. That's just embarrasing. There are also a few (about 4-5) bikes to try out, but then you get even less variety in both vehicles and racing modes so it's not worth the trouble.
Worth mentioning are the features common to the Burnout series. Takedowns (pushing opponents into walls and oncoming traffic) are still in, but have been made pathetically easy. A slight nudge will send the other car into certain death. This pretty much takes out any fun out of takedowns, at least for me. It's about as challenging as kicking blind kittens. The rest of the game suffers from a simmilar affliction, with the enemies being terribly bad at driving, easy to overtake, turbo boost is easier than ever to accumulate, traffic has been slowed down, etc. Even the crash mode has been watered down into mediocrity. And the worst of all, the feeling of speed is absent. Everything feels slow and dull.
The musical tracks are like the rest of the game - a few flashes of good drowning in a sea of poop. There are a couple of classics like Guns'n'Roses or Twisted Sister, but for the most part, it's emo crap and mostly from no-name bands I've never even heard about. I'll grant that someone might enjoy such music, but for me it was just plain bad and annoying. Let me illustrate it: the Avril Lavigne track in there is one of the LESS painful ones to endure. There's also about a dozen classical music tracks that simply don't fit in with the rest of the game. Considering I still play the soundtrack to the original NFS:Underground on my MP3 player, this was quite a disappointment.
I'm about to wrap this one up and I can't help but wonder who's the target audience for this game? Must be the younger crowd considering the musical selection. Must be the more casual type considering the lack of any challenge. But wouldn't casual gamers preffer a more pick-up-and-play approach instead of having to waste time screwing around a badly designed open world environment.
Even putting that aside, the sheer mediocrity of the game's visuals, gameplay, audio and pretty much every aspect means I can't really reccomend this to anyone, with the potential exception of Open World Racing Game Enthusiasts.
TLDR version: Boring, bland, too much faffing about. Nothing particualrly terrible, but nothing actually interesting. A gray sea of mediocrity at every step
For those of you who like numerical grades, I'll call this one 5.5/10
Now, let's get down to business! Burnout Paradise is the latest game in the Burnout series. This long running racing series was never one to focus too much on realism, instead opting for easy access and solid gameplay. While I'm not a big racing fan, I indulge in the genre and Burnout games (especially Burnout 3 on PS2) were always a welcome sight whenever one of my friends brought a console over. I was quite happy to hear that the latest installment of the series was coming to the PC as well and went out to rent it as soon as it came out. Unfortunately, I was in for an unpleasant suprise...
The game takes place in the titular Paradise City, which is open to your explorations at all times. You can freely cruise all over the city and its surrounding areas, unlocking events and cars, finding secrets and collectables and generally messing around. At every intersection you can start one of the events in categories such as Race, Road Rage (take out opposing cars), Marked Man (survive to the finish line), etc. These events start almost seamlessly and only the start and (perhaps) finish lines are preset, you can take any route you want. Winning events upgrades your driver's licence which gives you access to new cars and there are dozens of events for you to find and try out. Sounds pretty great so far, right?
Well, this is where the whole thing starts falling apart faster than a leper in a tornado. First of all, Paradise City isn't all that big to begin with. What's worse, it's not interesting either. It's mostly gray, with some gray and metallic gray highlights. Some splotches of color can be seen, but they are an exception. The city in Prototype looks more interesting. Sure, you can go out of the city, but then it's just mostly shit-brown with green highlights. The whole point of open world games is to have an open world worth exploring. Oblivion had this same problem, only Burnout Paradise takes it to a new level of blandness.
The events system is broken. It's hard to tell one event from another (except the general category), they all play the same and since the city is so boring - they ARE the same. Not to mention that if you want a bit of variety, you'll have to drive to the other end of the city, which means just a ton of faffing about instead of actually racing. Sure, there are "collectables" to find along the way, but unless you find smashing through yellow fences a fulfilling activity, it's not going to help much.
The car selection was disappointing. Burnout never licenced actual car brands and instead opted for ripping off the existing brands and giving them alternative names. I can understand that, but the selection I encountered was awful. Cars either look like crap or are painted candy colors with badly designed decals and graphics. The damn things look like toys instead of racing cars. Except the hillbilly truck. That's just embarrasing. There are also a few (about 4-5) bikes to try out, but then you get even less variety in both vehicles and racing modes so it's not worth the trouble.
Worth mentioning are the features common to the Burnout series. Takedowns (pushing opponents into walls and oncoming traffic) are still in, but have been made pathetically easy. A slight nudge will send the other car into certain death. This pretty much takes out any fun out of takedowns, at least for me. It's about as challenging as kicking blind kittens. The rest of the game suffers from a simmilar affliction, with the enemies being terribly bad at driving, easy to overtake, turbo boost is easier than ever to accumulate, traffic has been slowed down, etc. Even the crash mode has been watered down into mediocrity. And the worst of all, the feeling of speed is absent. Everything feels slow and dull.
The musical tracks are like the rest of the game - a few flashes of good drowning in a sea of poop. There are a couple of classics like Guns'n'Roses or Twisted Sister, but for the most part, it's emo crap and mostly from no-name bands I've never even heard about. I'll grant that someone might enjoy such music, but for me it was just plain bad and annoying. Let me illustrate it: the Avril Lavigne track in there is one of the LESS painful ones to endure. There's also about a dozen classical music tracks that simply don't fit in with the rest of the game. Considering I still play the soundtrack to the original NFS:Underground on my MP3 player, this was quite a disappointment.
I'm about to wrap this one up and I can't help but wonder who's the target audience for this game? Must be the younger crowd considering the musical selection. Must be the more casual type considering the lack of any challenge. But wouldn't casual gamers preffer a more pick-up-and-play approach instead of having to waste time screwing around a badly designed open world environment.
Even putting that aside, the sheer mediocrity of the game's visuals, gameplay, audio and pretty much every aspect means I can't really reccomend this to anyone, with the potential exception of Open World Racing Game Enthusiasts.
TLDR version: Boring, bland, too much faffing about. Nothing particualrly terrible, but nothing actually interesting. A gray sea of mediocrity at every step
For those of you who like numerical grades, I'll call this one 5.5/10
