Well, my 360’s been a happy bunny these last 9 or so days. I have managed to play Burnout Paradise on it for at least a small amount of time each day. I’m slowly working my way to getting my Elite license. Progress so far:
Smashes: 397/400
Billboards: ~half left to go
Jumps: ~30 last time I checked
Drive-Thrus: 35/35
Car Parks: 11/11
Events: 115 – I’m on the last license
I’ve still got like two thirds of the cars left to get and I’m not really focusing on road rules at the moment, though I have been trying to set Showtime Road Rules whenever I accidently go into it.
As far as the game is concerned, I love it. There is only one minor flaw, and even that comes with a good side.
Good things:
Soundtrack – I’ve already turned off more of the dancy & metally songs and I’m now left with the nice fast ones or ones with a beat to take cars down to. Favourites are:
♬ Rockstar (Jason Nevins Remix) – N.E.R.D (awesome for road rage and much better than the original)
♬ Girlfriend – Avril Lavigne (has been on my own playlist since the album came out 
)
♬ Dead Living – Sugarcult (second appearance on a Burnout OST I think)
♬ Going Through Changes – Army of Me
♬ Stop! – Jane’s Addiction
♬ Fire Away – Jupiter One
♬ Creepshow – Kerli
♬ Block Out The World – Maxeen
♬ Finger On The Trigger – Never Heard Of It
♬ Until You Leave – Permanent Me
♬ Calling All Cars – Senses Fail
♬ Beautiful Ruin – Make Good Your Escape
Free Roaming – or whatever, you know, the style of the game. It’s exactly what I’ve been dreaming of since those days spent driving around Big Surf Shores on Point of Impact. I love it. I haven’t been online much at all (mostly because freeburn mode kinda scares me) as I’ve just been enjoying myself cruising around Paradise City. The scenery is lush, and there’s so many places to go and explore. I’m a teeny bit disappointed you have to keep getting off the railway track, but I suspect that would make it way to easy to win races if they didn’t force you back onto the road with the other players.
DJ Atomika – I must be the only person who actually likes this guy. I don’t even know if there’s a way to turn him off (but I did find after ages of playing he stopped talking, even when it came to doing events T_T), but I don’t really care. He makes much more sense than Stryker from Takedown. See, with Takedown, the idea of having a Burnout radio station was a bit weird (even in this age with digital radio). It was like “Who cares who’s racing on some other continent, it’s not local to me etc.”, and well, his voice was kind of annoying. I don’t know if they changed the voice actor, but Atomika sounds more mature, like an old burner who knows what he’s talking about. It just fits in nicely with the style of the game. Plus, he sounds kinda cute *cough*. 
Super Jumps – I find these a bit daunting at first, and I’m not sure I like not being able to turn the camera off, but I think they’re amazing. Back in Revenge on Motor City, the best part of that track I found, was the jump up through the MSCP and down again. It seemed so free. Paradise has more of that, and it’s so much bigger. Okay, so it’s not realistic. If I were to do that in real life my (non-existant car) would be a wreck and I’d be dead, but in the game it’s amazing. I love on White Mountain, coming down the windy road past the entrance to the quarry, and just jumping off (I’ve been trying to do 360 flatspins off there and double barrel rolls without success 
).
Burnout Chaining - I’ve been waiting for this for ages. They finally saw sense. Despite my love for them, I’ve only managed a measly x8. I don’t know whether I’m out of practice or it’s just more difficult. I suspect the last one. If they offered an achievement for a x20 burnout chain on PoI, it would be for 0 or 1 gp. It would have to be since (if you pick the right map) it’s so easy to get more than that . I think the pop-in of the traffic adds to the difficulty. You don’t seem to get as much warning as you did in older burnout games.
The Game – I’m not kidding.
Bad Points
Not being able to turn off takedown/crash/jump cam - This is the only thing that seems to conflict with the style of gameplay. One minute your there, in Paradise City, burning out to your heart’s content. The next minute you’ve been yanked out of your car just to watch your rivals crash after you take them out, your car crash after you get taken out (or do something really dumb), or your car as it does an awesome jump that you should be experiencing too. That’s it. That’s my only complaint, and as I said before, there are good points to it. Like when I take someone out and it looks like I’m about to crash too, while I’m watching the takedown cam, my car is being driven to safety some way ahead of where I was :3
I don’t even mind the lack of being able to restart a race since, if you fail at one, you just get to drive on to the next one a few junctions away. The Stunt Run and Road Rage events aren’t dependant on your location, so if you miss that 100,000 point target in Silver Lake but you’ve ended up in Harbour Town, you can just drive to the nearest spot in HT and start again.
★ And to get out of an event if you do badly, it seems you just have to stop your car Which makes sense if we want to be all immersive and realistic or whatever.
So yeah, I love the game ♥
shepherdnick said,
5th February 2008 @ 11:56 pm
:O I can’t believe how many things you’ve completed, you _are_ thorough
- you’ve only got three more smashes to find!
One thing I do find annoying (and at the same time pretty cool) about EA Trax is that when you are burning out they change the depth of the music that is playing. It’s weird to describe but there’s like definitely more bass, but I don’t think they just increase the volume. I find it annoying because when you’re playing a custom soundtrack, the little EA Trax box should display the artist, album and song title if you’ve got the correct ID3 tag for the song. Changing the bass levels might be a little more tricky, but I think it could be done.
Free-roaming – you know, I complained about it on my blog, but I seem to remember those exact words coming out of my mouth whilst talking to another person about Paradise. Seems I am just blogging about things that other people hate. I love the fact that if I can’t complete the event on the first go, all I have to do is just drive to the next junction to start a different event.
DJ Atomika is kinda cool (you know ‘cos I tweeted about it
)
Super jumps look incredible. I love the visual style of some of the new Paradise things, like the camera movements when driving through an auto-repair and the super jumps. I love how the filter changes to a black and white, it’s so seamless and refreshing to see it in a game. The cars are incredibly acrobatic too. The quarry and airfield especially, I must have spent easily 3/4 hours in them just messing about with jumps and barrel rolls and flat spins. (Psst also if you wanna get a 360 flatspin try the massive super jump into the quarry – I got like 440 degrees when I did it). There’s a set of jumps between the observatory and the wind farm (I think it’s the ones you said) that are just the most satisfying bit of a game that I’ve played in a long while if you nail them.
Burnout chaining is something I would not like to challenge you for. I remember you getting something like in the hundreds for chaining on Burnout 2, right? That is just insane.
I don’t mind the crash cam, as I said up there ^ that the camera tricks are cool! And I love that you never see the same crash twice! I think it makes it feel a lot less annoying than past Burnouts. I’d love to see how well it works with the XBOX Live Vision Camera too – seeing Tom’s face every couple of minutes when I take him out wouldn’t be fun though
You know, now I’ve read your blog, I regret writing mine a little bit. I feel as though I’ve let other people’s annoyances taint my view of the game. You wrote an entirely optimistic view of the game, which is what I wanted to do, because it’s a really good game.
Kitty said,
6th February 2008 @ 11:01 am
Yeah, and they’re being so sneaky, hiding T_T There’s one in White Mountains, one in Harbour Town and one in Downtown Paradise. I found a few hiding on the ramps at the top of some MSCPs but I can’t remember which one’s I’ve checked lol.
I know what you mean
Kinda like they did with the soundtracks in 2 & 1 whenever you boosted (like a reward for getting it going or something). I did always miss that when it came to playing my custom soundtrack. I seem to remember in Takedown and Revenge the best they managed was making it a bit louder, but you’re right, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to do that with custom music or display the track information if they’re tagged correctly (I mean, winamp etc. do it 
). They did say that you needed an HDD to play it on the 360 because of updates and extra content etc. Maybe if it was suggested to them they could add it like a patch?
DJ Atomika rocks my socks ♥ :3 heh.
I loved the quarry! I’ve been trying to find superjumps to 360 flatspin off and completely forgot about that one! I’d been attempting the one on the S. Mountain road and getting nowhere. I seem to get closer to 360 when doing it accidently :/ I’ll definitely try that one
And yeah, I love those jumps too. They’re great for winning that One-on-One race to the observatory. I like the greyscale cam too, it lets me know when I’ve not done a jump yet. I was wondering if there was a gallery somewhere where you could watch super jumps again, since they’re meant to be like cameras set up around Paradise City to catch all the nifty stunts (I think DJ Atomika said something like that anyway), but there doesn’t seem to be.
Hehe, yeah but honestly, I suck at chaining in paradise T_T. Most I ever managed in PoI was x300 on Big Surf Shores and that took an hour :S That was all down to the traffic being fairly sparse for most of it and very predictable though. The highest on Xbox live at the time was something over 1000! I think they did that on Palm Bay Marina, which was much harder given it’s all in the city with traffic everywhere.
Yeah, not seeing the same crash twice is definitely on of the good things about crash cam
It’s awesome seeing how the car crumples and what bits fly off. One time Mike had the side panels of his car come off so you could see the bare wheels and that underneath, and he was driving around like that. It was cool. Have you got any shots of people after taking them down yet? I’ve only got one from a random freeburn online, but I think it could be a bit weird seeing people. It could be open to abuse too lol. You can imagine what some people might point their cameras at o_O; Hehe you totally pwn Tom at Burnout then 
Don’t regret it
I think maybe I’ve been a little overly optimistic because I love the series so much. Maybe you could write a follow up (like GamesTM do sometimes)? I do think some of the online reviews and that have missed the point of the game and what Criterion were aiming for. Like the restarting a race thing. If you really were a real life burnout driver, would you go through a boring menu to get to your event? No, you’d drive there 
(But then, if you were a burnout driver you’d likely be dead after your first takedown lol…). I know what you mean about letting other people taint your view of the game, I think that happened to me with Halo2 (though the ending was a little disappointing) 