Don’t you hate when non car folk review racing games like they know what they are talking about, then you try it and it sucks?. Me too! So to start off our video game reviews we do EA’s newest release from the popular Burnout series. This game got totally revamped from the ground up. I had a chance to try out the new demo for Burnout Paradise on Xbox 360’s Marketplace so I thought I would share my nitpicky racing game comments.
This game impressed me from the get go. EA always uses very nicely designed and put together menus so it set a nice tone for me to start the demo. I must remind you big motor sports enthusiasts like myself that this game is purely for the fun, not entirely supposed to replicate real world engine sounds and handling physics. I did find however there were some common similarities in this game that maybe the “simulator” racing games can take some points from.
The main thing this game has that others don’t is the damage model of the vehicles, it is absolutely incredible!. The car’s body panels actually crumple, warp, crush, and bend as you hit an obstacle. I spent an hour driving the car around and smashing it into things, what a stress reliever!. This game may be distributed in Road Rage classes because of it’s realism in damage and it may just be this game’s main selling point.
On the other hand there are other things to do in the game while not destroying your car beyond recognition. You can drift, e-brake slide, do massive burnouts and hit jumps specially made to make your car do a barrel roll. Race from any traffic light all over Paradise City (which is a huge map by the way), discover all the ways to earn points smashing, crashing and pretty much flattening your car and compete in stunt race where you are on your own and get as many points as possible in a certain time frame.
Let’s now talk about some downsides to the game that may be only limited to the demo, I am not sure. There is nobody driving…… anywhere… the cars don’t have driver models at all which was very confusing to me. It then dawned on me that you can destroy the cars so realistic that the driver models would have to ….. well… be destroyed with the car. If you drop a car from a 20 story building and it lands on it’s roof the thing will become a pancake, and that’s what this game does so I would imagine the driver wouldn’t look too pretty after that. This DJ whatever his name was talks wayyy too much throughout the game, I wanted to find him and hit him with the car as he gets pretty irritating fast. The turbo, boost, nitrous feature the cars have is O.K but I wouldn’t say it is the best thing the game delivers and it gets a pain when in a race you rely on who has the most boost rather then how fast the car is.
So let’s conclude this first review on a basis with saying it is a “Renter”. I won’t be getting this game unless I won it in a contest, however put you and some friends together and this game would be a total laugh. Go play the demo if you haven’t already and drive as fast as you can into a wall.. it is pretty fun.
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