GameGirl.com

Take me down, To the paradise city, Where the grass is green, And the girls are pretty, Take me home
I've never been a huge race game fan. Racing games always remind me of the Gran Turismos series which had weird controls or the Need for Speed series which always had nice licensed cars but not alot else. One that has always stuck out is the Burnout series which was infamous for it's awful design of the main menu after every race, typically ruining the gameplay. These games just didn't do it for me. Burnout Paradise (Previously known as Burnout 5) changed my view on racing games. Available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, this is the first racing game on the next gen systems that stands above the rest.

Resemble any cars you know? ;)

Paradise City is completely open and doesn't involve any loading pages or main menu breaks. You have the feeling you can do what you want, when you want not like traditonal Burnout games. With over 250+ miles of open road in Paradise City you can spend your time find the 120 unique events, and over 300 online challenges. The races are no longer pre-designated, and can start at any of the 120+ traffic lights in the city. You will have to spend alot of time unlocking the close to 75 different cars. One major bummer is Burnout's cars are not licensed real cars, although some do resemble extremely well known cars. When you first start the game, you start with a car you get from the junk yard, which looks almost undriveable. You'll see that any car you get from the Paradise City's junk yard will be almost gone and it's up to you to repair the damage. Each car falls into a category; Aggression, Stunt, or Speed. Aggression cars are perfect for Road Rage, Stunt cars are designed for "showing off", and Speed? Well, I think that speaks for itself.

The game brings a completely new feature to the next gen systems which will bring use to your PlayStation Eye or the Xbox Live Vison cameras. It's called "Mugshots". Battle your friends online and when a player is taken down, your cameras will automaticly take a "Mugshot" and be exchanged. I think this is possibly the coolest feature of the game-- being able to see a person possibly throwing their controller down in a fit of rage?! If you don't want your opponent to see your face or you don't have a camera your avatar will be exchanged.


Not only is it a well designed game, the game is graphicly gorgeous. Many people saw in the trailers posted online before the game came out, the crashes are simply amazing. The soundtrack isn't bad either, it's a nice mixture of different genres. Too bad the only song I wanted to listen to was Guns 'N' Roses "Paradise City".

As the ads say "Team Up or Takedown"!

• << prev
• next >>