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Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box

Burnout Paradise is the first Burnout game for the PC. Always heralded as a great arcade racing game with emphasis on extremely graphic car crashes and luridicious speed, this time the gameplay moves to a "sandbox" model while retaining most of the key features that made earlier Burnout titles so much fun on the consoles. Welcome to Paradise City!

So, racing around a city is the name of the game. Streets, roads and highways of Paradise City have been meticulously designed to support high speed racing - T-intersections and sharp turns are exceedingly rare and everywhere you can find shortcuts and alternate routes. At first the idea of high speed racing in a city environment sounds silly, but somehow the game world of Burnout Paradise manages to pull it off in flying colors without looking too unnatural.

The only remarkable bit of corner-cutting is the lack of pedestrians or drivers. Supposedly this is due to the fact that there would be no way to get the "E10+" rating for the game if Criterion had included GTA-style maiming of pedestrians or realistic ragdoll drivers in the spirit of Flatout. Both are omissions, but fortunately neither really harms the game as the racing gameplay really needs neither of these features - and the vehicle carnage is so detailed that it more than makes up for it.

Racing City

As you roam the streets and roads of Paradise City, you can participate in numerous events - just about every intersection is a starting line for an event. Events include Race, Road Rage, Marked Man, Stunt Run and Burning Route. Each offers a different twist on racing.

• Race is just that - normal racing across the city the finish line, with "anything goes" as the rulebook. Pick your own route and feel free to bump your opponents into suitable concrete barriers.
• Stunt Run is all about racking up massive scores by chaining boosts and drifts with different jumps in a limited time with the whole city is your play area.
• Marked Man is a survival race of sorts - reach the finish line before your opponents trash your car completely. Pick your own route and feel free to pre-emptively tackle the opposition.
• Road Rage is all about takedowns - bumping the competition against barriers or oncoming traffic before the time runs out or your car is completely wrecked.
• Burning Route is pure time trial mode, with specific routes for each car type in the game - with upgraded version of the car as reward for completing the event.

Accumulate wins to upgrade your license and to unlock new cars - most of which you have to then acquire by taking one down so the wreck can be delivered to the junkyard for you to re-use.

Unfortunately there is are no separate Crash events. Crash mode was the really fun part of previous Burnout titles but it's been shelved for Burnout Paradise. Instead you can compete in setting a crash record for each road of the city in somewhat similar Showtime mode. Sadly it's a quite disappointing affair - you get to bounce a wreck around while trying to hit as many other vehicles as possible, raking up damage and multipliers in "crashes" lasting up to several minutes. No special tactics related to the layout of a special crash junction or anything like that - just mindless carnage.

Cars deform with great detail in crashes.

Burnout Paradise Billboards - Gotta Smash Em All!

In addition to the Showtime mode, you can complete numerous other objectives in the "free driving" mode of the game. Each road has a best time to beat and the city is littered with "smash" objectives - yellow gates fencing off shortcuts and "Burnout Paradise" billboards strategically placed for the player to smash through. Goal is to smash every unique gate and billboard across the city.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Visuals and PerformancePage 4: Summary, Scores

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