I know i said i wasn' t going to but i couldn' t really not.

If you' re a lazy fucker and don' t want to read this amazingly well written but damn long post... just read the bolded part below :P

Longwinded and mildly frustrating due to a lack of a retry option (or any real menus) but *** awesome nonetheless! If you have ever enjoyed a Burnout or Midtown Madness game... you' ll enjoy this :)

For everybody else...

If you took the vehicles and general gameplay mechanics from any previous Burnout game and dropped them in Need For Speed: Most Wanted' s Rockport City... you would end up with something resembling Burnout Paradise. If you haven' t played Most Wanted then shame on you... it' s probably the best Need For Speed game to date. Underground 2, Carbon and ProStreet all pale in comparison to the genius of Most Wanted...

Burnout Revenge on 360 was a port the Xbox (and PS2) game and so Paradise is the first proper next-gen Burnout. As such, Criterion have gone to great lengths to overhaul and refine many of the aspects of the critically acclaimed series... with arguably mixed results.

Burnout Revenge was stylistically closer to the OutRun games. The relatively exotic locations consisted of palm tree-lined boulevards, mountenous national parks, the icy peaks of the European Alps and the neon-lit far east. Those kind of tracks are nowhere to be found in Burnout Paradise. In fact, it' s nothing like i imagined paradise would be.

The game features a single open world - much like the Midtown Madness game or the more recent Most Wanted and Test Drive Unlimited. Unlike Most Wanted however you can go anywhere in the city from the off. There are no areas that need to be unlocked to progress, ...if you want to cruise around the entire city and surrounding hills before doing a single race... go right ahead.

The city itself is very much like that in Most Wanted both in terms of size and style. The game even features a world map that lists all of the available events, just like in Most Wanted with the only differences being the lack of a directional arrow and the inability to jump straight to your garage. There' s no directional arrow because Burnout Paradise has actual street names and they' re displayed at the top of the screen. As you approach a junction, you' ll see the names of the upcoming streets on the left and right of the name of the street you' re currently traveling along. This is primarily how you are supposed to navigate during races as the game tells you by highlighting (well - blinking like an indicator) the street you need to turn onto next. It takes some getting used to, and the sheer nature of the Burnout formula (that' d be racing at 500mph and trying to avoid the tons of other cars on the road) can make it difficult to make the recommended turning. Not that it matters. If you miss your turning, you just take the next one and do you best to get back to where you need to be.

The biggest issue i have with the game is the lack of menus. I completely understand and applaud what Criterion have tried to do. It is, to an extent, more accessible. You drive to the event start marker, hold accelerate and brake down simultaneously and the race/whatever begins. However, it soon becomes annoying having to drive for a minute or two to another marker to begin another event... and if you lose a race or realise mid-way that you ain' t going to win or whatever, you can' t just simply retry, you have to drive all the way back to the start marker to retry that particular event. It' s more than a simple oversight... it' s borderline rediculous.

The game features 120 junctions which act as event markers, but unfortunately you can' t tag one and get directions of how to get there... you have to keep bringing up the mapto make sure you' re on the right road. Also, as i already noted, you can' t even quick jump back to your junkyard which acts as a garage. You actually have to drive to one of them to change your vehicle. These things aren' t game breaking, but they are quite frustrating.

Along with the junkyards you can drive through repair and spray shops and gas stations to fix your damaged car, get a random change of colour and refill your boost meter respectively. Often winning an event will " unlock" a new car, but you' ll actually have to find it in the city and take it down to be able to drive it. That' s never a problem because shortly after unlocking it you' re likely to see it on the road you' re driving along and they' re not hard to take out. When you do force the new vehicle into whetever... it' s transported to the junkyard as a " wreck" . Clever eh? When you go and change to that vehicle for the first time it' s damaged and you won' t be able to change the colour until you' re been to a repair shop. When you do fix the car up and drive through a spray shop your car will be sprayed a random colour. You might have to drive through several times to get a colour you' re happy with, however... next time you switch to that car at your junkyard you will be able to cycle through all of the available colour and paint types. It' s kinda logical, but a little impractical.

Burnout is about racing really fast, taking ***ers out, big crashes and big jumps. Burnout Paradise has all of those bases covered, and then some. Classic event types like Race, Burning (Lap) Route and Road Rage are included, the Crash mode has been completely reworked and there are new event types called Stunt Run and Marked Man.

Crash mode has been renamed Showtime which can be activated at any time as you' re racins around the city. Instead of going to an event marker, you simply hold the L1 & R1 buttons to whip the car into a roll, essentially turning you into a bouncing bomb. You use your boost to bounce alongcrashing into as many cars and buses as possible which in turn increases your boost meter. When you run out of boost you stop and it calculates you score using the same old multipliers. It' s a shit ton of fun and really works far better than the crash mode of old. It' s one of the changes i' m really happy with and the fact that you can activate it anywhere it very cool.

Stunt Run is pretty self explanatory. If you' ve played the demo you' ll already know how it works. Make a jump, spin, roll or whetever and you accumulate points depending on degrees of rotation, distance and height etc... combo these together by performing another stunt before the little timer completes it' s cycle and you end up with more points. It works well enough, but the barrel roles are tricky to land. I guess it' s a good thing that should you crash you still get the points you accumulated up until that point. Since you only need a specific number of wins to reach the nect license and it doesn' t matter what kind of win, you could actually completely avoid the Stunt Runs if you wanted to. It' s fun to a certain extent but it' s not something that i' ve really gotten into.

Marked Man is s simple point to point race type where hordes of angry enemy cars try to take you down before you reach the finish line. The enemies aren' t overly aggressive and these can, in general, be completed with relative ease.

Technically the game is a mixed bag. The environment and vehicles look nice enough, but they' re nowhere near as nice as other next-gen racers. On the flip side of that though the game runs at a constant 60fps, has no loads as you drive around the large open world, has some of the best partical effects and the best crashes you' ve ever seen. The sound is fantastic, just like in every burnout before it and the soundtrack isn' t bad at all. DJ Atomica is annoying but can be disabled in the options menu.

The game supposedly features 75 drivable vehicles, but some of them are variations of others... say a track version that has slightly different stats making it faster but weaker for example. They come in various classes, aggression, stunt, speed etc... but most importantly every car, including the variations feels different.

Overall i' m extremely happy with Paradise and would definitely recommend it to anybody who' s enjoyed a previous Burnout game. It may be a " complete reinvention" but it' s still Burnout through and through.

I haven' t bothered with the multiplayer yet and possibly won' t but it' s apparently pretty kickass. If somebody else gets the PS3 version then i could be tempted to check it out

Please. Buy. This. Game.