Trouble in Paradise?
After spending a very unhealthy amount of time playing the PS3 demo of Burnout Paradise last night, I’m a little divided on my final impression. Their decision to roll with an open city environment, very similar to what we see in Test Drive: Unlimited, is flawlessly demonstrated in the demo. The lack of load times here is key to the fun factor of the series and I’m thankful they pulled that off. My only concern is if this is the proper direction for the series.
Burnout, to me, is all about the racing. I enjoy Crash Mode or Road Rage from time to time but in the end, only the Race mode had the legs to keep me coming back for more. Unfortunately, through all my time with the demo, I couldn’t find one race event. It’s possible that I somehow joined the wrong games or missed all the race events for the entire evening but I don’t think that’s the case. As I said, my love for this series is the pure racing, the incredible sense of speed combined with the wrecks has yet to be topped. I don’t enjoy tediously hunting down and driving through billboards or competing for the most hang time off of a jump. There are also, “parking” challenges that I couldn’t find anywhere. That doesn’t sound very speedy or crashy to me.
I understand it’s just a demo but seeing as they decided to demonstrate their new product as more of a sandbox-style racing title instead of an actual racing title leads me to believe their focus has shifted. It’s too early to pass judgement but I’d like to hear from everyone else on your early impressions. I know it looks great, sounds great and the networking is spectacular. I’m concerned about the game itself; the Burnout I know and love.
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Racing will apparently be in the game:
From Gamespot’s Dec 10th preview:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/driving/burnout5/news.html?sid=6183859&tag=topslot;title;4&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot
“You have your race challenges that take you from one end of Paradise City to the next, and your stunt events where you execute as many huge jumps, drift turns, and barrel rolls as you can to string together to score huge point combos.
There are also marked-man events, where you must get from one point to another without being taken down by psychotic drivers looking to do your car much harm, as well as road-rage challenges, where you flip the script and try to take down as many cars as you can in a given amount of time. Finally there are make-specific challenges, which you can enter only in the prescribed car. To switch cars, you head to the closest junkyard (the Paradise equivalent to the garage) and change your current ride for any car you’ve collected on the way. You collect cars either by upgrading your license, or taking them down during the occasional street encounters with these special collectible rides. “
On the lower right-hand corner of the map (I don’t remember the intersection) there is a race. When you beat that it opens another.
Parking challenges are where ever there are cars parked along the side of the street. Creatively parallel park for a percentage.
Yeah, it’s on Glancey Street. Apparently the start points for races are at stoplights. There’s also a timed race around there, a block or so east.