Burnout Paradise - The Best Game Ever!

So, the title above is meant to draw you in.. you know for the large readership that I have... I've had my Playstation 3 for over a year, and I've played quite a few games on it. Of those, most were rented by Gamefly, and a couple I bought. There is one that I got in February through Gamefly, and after about a week or two, I bought it. That game is Burnout Paradise.

For those of you not familiar with the Burnout series, there have been five games (made by Criterion and 2 made by a different company) with the latest being Paradise. Essentially Burnout is an arcade style racer which rewards reckless driving (drifting, airtime, crashing other cars, etc..) with boost. The game has always had a love of crashing and even has made crash mode which makes the worst part of a racing game (crashing) into something fun. I started on Burnout 3, and love it, and Revenge. They were both incredibly fun to play, and I played the heck out of them.

When Burnout Paradise was coming out, I knew I would buy it, but that was solidified when I played the demo. This was Burnout like I'd never seen it. A completely open world racing game, where I choose the route I want to take in a race (even if it's wrong), a massive amount of cars and locations, and almost limitless possibilities, and all of that in glorious HD. I was hooked and I bought the game (after renting it on Gamefly (gets me a discount on games I buy also). I started working through the numerous events. Races are just like they sound. Marked Man events have you being chased by cars trying to take you down. Road Rage lets you take others down. Burnout Routes a timed events that earn you new cars. And Stunt Runs let you put your car through barrel rolls, flat spins, and other things not recommended by the car manufacturer. Each event was a lot of fun, and immediately accessible. The loading times were gone and every event was just an intersection away. This was cause for some to complain because if you were trying to do a burning route to get a new car, and you failed (which I did a LOT), you had to drive back to the start again to try once more. But in essence, this just helped to teach me the city. Getting to know better routes and shortcuts to take. I didn't even touch on the Road Rules and Showtime (which replaces crash mode) which are both pretty cool in their own right.

All of this was fun and I enjoyed the 80 cars that I had to choose from, but for me, the real fun started when I took the game online. While some games make online very difficult, getting online in Paradise is as simple as three presses to the right on the game pad. There you can race, just drive around, or set new road rules/showtime scores for your friends to beat. Once I got online, I was immersed in the land of the online challenges. The offline mode had 60 different accomplishments which when completed, helped to earn a new status for the game. Online, there were 350 challenges (50 2-player, 50 3-player, etc.. to 8-player). After finding some friends on the Criterion Games forum, I was able to complete two sets of these and get my 81st car. I was totally hooked. I've done a few races online, but for the most part, I've been doing challenges ever since. A couple weeks ago, I completed all 350, but that didn't stop me. A trend with this community is that once you achieve something, you help others to achieve it as well. It's a really cool experience to watch people from all over the world having fun and encouraging this kind of accomplishment. I know it's just a game, but there's something to be said for that.

The coolest thing happened this week however. Criterion has not stopped supporting this game even though it shipped six months ago. Yesterday, they released an update to the game which added some new paint jobs for cars, three new online modes (Marked Man, Stunt Run, and Road Rage), custom soundtracks for PS3, and most importantly, 70 new multipart, timed challenges. I've already finished about 10 of these and they are a TON of fun. The timed element really adds to the accomplishment of completing them. I've played Online Marked Man, and won my only try so far. I got lucky and took down someone chasing me. That was a lot of fun as well. The best part of this update, it was free. And it's not the last update for the year. There are at least two more coming (one which will bring Motorcycles)

So, why is this the best game ever? The gameplay is awesome, the replayability is phenomenal, the online community is accepting and easy to play with (for the most part), and the developer continued support has made the game even deeper than it was. I recommend this game to anyone who has a PS3 or 360. Some of the events have a little learning curve, but the city is so fun to drive in, and the game is such a blast, that it was easy to call this the best game ever.

BTW, if you're ever online on PS3 playing Burnout Paradise, my PSN is FrankenCelery