Good but simply not great
Not enough to ruin the game, but not enough to send the game to the elusive next level either.
Don't get me wrong, when Burnout Paradise works, it REALLY works. The graphics in this game are absolutely stunning, for one thing. We're no strangers to open-world, free-roaming racing (NFS Most Wanted and Carbon, Test Drive Unlimited), but BP brings us amazing visuals that those three titles, while visually impressive (less so with TDU), could only dream about...and at a amazing 60fps that pretty much never stutters or hitches. Neither the NFS nor TDU could come close to pulling that feat off. And the audio works just fine too, although whoever picked Avril Levigne's "Girlfriend" for the soundtrack needs to be executed immediately, and violently at that.
Unfortunately, the world of Paradise City is so beautiful and striking that everything else in the game takes a clear backseat to it...including the actual races themselves. The fact that the whole world is accessible right from the get-go is actually a detriment rather than an enhancement; everything looks so damn good that you'll probably spend far more time early on checking out the sights than actually racing. What's bad about that is that you'll see most of the landscape way before you're even close to finishing the many races this game throws at you. One of the main allures for many racers is seeing new tracks and different scenery as they progress through the game. BP has effectively removed that dangling carrot from the equation, and it's a big carrot at that.
That brings us to the racing. Burnout titles have always forsaken all other racing elements for two in particular: speed and destruction. Suffice it to say that BP serves up mass quantities of both. The downside is that there's not nearly enough variety in the racing types to stave off the repetitiveness that starts to set in around the License B class. Road rage is fun for a while, but there's just not much strategy to it: just keep sideswiping cars into the sides of the track, stay within the general vicinity of a repair shop and you're in. Standard racing comes down more to not getting lost than it does to being better than your opponents. Marked man is OK too, though not really amazing. Stunt mode has its moments...I'm still getting used to that one. And I'm sorry, not being able to start a race over, or to even abort one in progress, is absolutely ridiculous; for that matter, would it be too much to ask to allow players to warp to a junkyard to change up their vehicles? It's almost as if Criterion was worried that players wouldn't check out every last street of Paradise City and the surrounding countryside unless forced to...which they shouldn't be, because everything here looks so damned good that I can't think of anyone who wouldn't want to find every last nook and cranny of eye candy...on their own terms.
Although Crash Mode had its share of flaws, Showtime Mode comes off as downright silly, and shallow at that. Here's what you do: drive around, look for two or three buses (dollar multipliers are tied to them), hit the shoulder buttons, and ring up the cash. You have some control over what you're doing, but not so much that you feel like you've pulled off some amazing feat whenn you ring up an impressive damage total. It basically comes down to this: find some buses and a good number of cars, and you'll beat whatever total was programmed into the game, no questions asked.
Yeah, the game has some flaws and can get repetitive in a hurry, but there's still something fun about it that keeps me coming back. Although the actual racing and gameplay doesn't quite live up to the breathtaking visual splendor, the world of Paradise City is so impressive that you'll keep coming back too. Once Criterion better understands how to implement open-world racing and fixes what are very correctable flaws, I easily foresee a "10" for their next effort.