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Now that the Need for Speed series has moved away from open environments and back to track-based racing with ProStreet, EA’s other racing series, Burnout, has stepped up to fill their open-world racing gap. Burnout Paradise is essentially the love child of the under-rated Test Drive Unlimited and Burnout Revenge. It’s exactly what you’d expect if you’ve played those two great games, resulting in a truly entertaining arcade racer.

Take Me Down to Paradise City…

Like the rest of the series, Burnout Paradise does not exist in anything close to the real world. Instead, it takes traditional racing and turns it on its head to create a gleefully surreal racing landscape full of mayhem that never crosses the line to overt sadism or actual malicious violence. Crashes are extreme, causing huge pile-ups of smoldering wreckage is the city’s great joy, and speeds are extreme.

The physics and feel of the racing isn’t anything like a simulation, but after so many refinements, Burnout’s racing feels perfect. The exceptional controls, especially at high speed or when performing breakneck driving stunts, has kept Burnout firmly ahead of the competition. While Paradise doesn’t really change any of the core mechanics of Burnout racing, it doesn’t take a step backwards either. In short, the game controls like a dream.

Where Paradise does differ from Revenge is, obviously, in the open environment. All of Paradise City is open to you right from the start, and you can simply drive around aimlessly getting the lay of the land and seeing the sites for as long as you want. Every intersection in the game offers an event, however, and each street offers further specific events as well. Based on stoplight events alone, there are about 150 challenges to win.

Bring a Map, Dude

Each first place win brings your driver’s license rating a step closer to the next rank, and it will be many hours before you suffer from a lack of new challenges. Just having the open environment changes a lot of the way Burnout is played. While most of the changes are good, not everyone is going to appreciate the differences.

Getting from point A to point B is no longer simply a matter of following a linear course. With the whole city open to you, it’s easy to find yourself veering off the normal route accidentally (or purposely). This can lead to excellent shortcuts or cause you to get hopelessly behind, sometimes without even realizing it.

Memorizing the lay of the land is key. Unlike a normal track-based racer, that means getting the hang of a huge area instead of a minor portion of it. Thankfully, the mini-map in the corner of the screen provides a lot of assistance, and the compass points the general direction you’re heading for. There aren’t any cops to worry about either, so speeding and vehicular mayhem is entirely feasible whether racing or just driving around.

Event Horizon

Previous iterations had a wide array of racing variations, and Paradise is no exception. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have quite the variety of Revenge. Intersection events and other landmarks are notated with colored dots on your map. There are several event styles to cruise across: race, road rage, stunt run, marked man, and burning routes. Burning routes are events specific to a particular car—which are unlocked through race wins, or by crashing them on the open road.

Road rage is simple game where you have to crash as many of your opponents as possible within a specific time frame. The stunt run tasks you with earning a specific number of points by jumping, breaking, and just generally tearing the street up with as much style as possible. Finally, marked man is a chase run, where cars are trying to prevent you from reaching a pre-determined location.

On any given street, there are also road rules challenges. Each road has a race and crash challenge that keeps both on- and offline score tallies. The race challenge is basically a time attack, while the showtime mode replaces the crash modes of old. You can activate these challenges at any time, and each road will have different goals to meet. The showtime mode is a lot of fun on the crowded downtown streets, but on the emptier country roads it seems almost pointless. Ultimately, the crash mode in Paradise lacks the beautifully choreographed feel and style of the pre-determined levels seen in the earlier games.

Drive Online

When not competing, you can hit the junkyard to look at your car collection. Gas stations and repair centers spread through the land offer an instant way to fill up your boost bar and repair damage. There are a horde of other side goals in the city as well—finding all the secret areas, destroying all the Burnout signs, and hitting all the super jumps provide plenty of non-racing fun.

Multiplayer is much more integrated in Paradise, though not quite to the level of Test Drive Unlimited. Using the directional pad, you can create or join a multiplayer game at anytime, and there is an incredible array of multiplayer-specific challenges for up to eight players. As great as the single player game is, the online support is certain to be the real drawing power for most gamers, and EA has done an exceptional job supporting the masses of online-centric racers.

It’s Like Paradise

Burnout Paradise is definitely one of the most entertaining next gen racers on the market. Although the open world has caused some negative changes, the overall effect is a great one. The game looks and sounds fantastic, but plays even better. There’s so much to do in Paradise City that you’ll spend hours exploring every nook. Even after the single player game dulls down, the multiplayer should provide even more fun.

Review by: Jason D'Aprile