I picked up
Burnout Paradise for the Xbox 360 earlier this week and finally got a chance to put some time into it last night. My high regard for the Demo carried over to the finished product, as the game so far has met all my expectations. The crash scenes are fantastic and the racing is top notch. I haven’t gone online yet, but the AI of the vehicles in the race is very good and will give you a solid effort on every race.
The demo truly gave just a small look into the amount of world there is and how many billboards, super jumps, fences and races you can find and beat. The 250 miles of roadway is seen during the various races, but it took me quite a while before I started to get my bearings without having to look at the map. Racing around at 120+ MPH sometimes makes it hard to pick up on landmarks. The controls are pretty simple, with seamless menus driven by both the buttons and utilizing the d-pad. No complaints so far.
I will say this, the amount of in-game advertising is truly taken to another level (not a good thing) in Burnout Paradise, with Billboards, Signage and branded cars scattered throughout. In addition, there
comes word that there are four cheat codes to unlock corporate cars from Best Buy, Circuit City, Gamestop and Wally-World. On a lighter note, the billboards for
CompUSA, the recently shuttered computer retailer, are still prevalent as ever. Apparently they still maintain an online presence or the contract was honored whether they are still in business or not. At some point, we need to start questioning why we still have $60 games when developers are so blatantly offsetting their costs with the in-game ads.
The best compliment I can give Burnout Paradise is that I sat down to play it, and didn’t even realize I had put in an hour and a half on the game I was having so much fun. I am looking forward to picking this bad boy back up tonight…
