Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box Review
A great arcade racer, Burnout Paradise makes it's debut on the PC with a wild crash accompanied by rock music
Now it’s time to talk about the technicalities. The game engine behind Paradise is a solid one, the driving feels natural and the majority of the cars handle pretty well, even at top speeds. However, you will still crash a lot because that’s the big entertainment factor of the game. And it must be said, the crashes look fantastic. Every time you crash or take someone out, the camera will swing around to showcase the results of the crash. The engine shows off detailed damage to the vehicle involved, with many bits and pieces of metal flying in all directions. As often as crashes happen, they surprisingly never get old too look at, thanks to their sheer entertainment factor and great detail. Overall the graphics are on-par with current generation of racing games, both arcade and simulations. The city is rich with color and has avoided the next-gen greyness bug that infected cities such as GTA4’s Liberty City. The textures are well placed, each street is labelled with an original name and can actually serve you well during some navigation. The HDR is not nearly as blinding as it has been in some recent games, and overall the cars look very nice. The only odd thing about the graphics engine is that all cars do not have drivers. This is passable for the most part, but once your car gets roughed up and the doors are off, it becomes rather strange. While having GTA4’s crash doll physics in Paradise make it absolutely hilarious, not including even just static drivers makes it look odd at times. Technically, the game performs great, even on medium specs. With tons of cars on screen and a spectacular, shredded-metal-producing crash in front of you, there is barely an FPS drop. It is certainly a well-done port, and well worth checking out the Demo if you need some reassurance. One odd thing regarding this game is the most confusing game menu you will ever see. I guarantee that it will take you about 10 minutes before you can comfortably say you can find the “Exit game” option. However once you get a hang of it, it’s not too bad.
The soundtrack for the game is rich, fitting and large – a good thing since that’s all you can listen to. There is no option to import your own music into the game, so you’re stuck with what’s given to you. It is also odd that the soundtrack cannot be played at random – it is going through the same playlist over and over, so at times you’ll even have an idea of what song is coming up next or the one after. The songs themselves are divided into 3 genres roughly. You start off with the rock and alternative songs from the popular bands of current generation. Later on you have a very large number of tracks from previous burnout games, these range from cool beats to techno remixes. And lastly, you will be able to listen to (or skip) a bunch of classical music. It’s out of place, so it’s good that you at least have the option to skip it.
As far as car sounds go, there is enough variety here to keep you from hearing the same sound loops too often. The DJ on the radio is not as annoying as some people portray him to be, although sometimes the lines can be too cheesy to take the guy seriously. But you’re stuck with him, so just tough it out and focus on the racing.
At the end of the day, I cannot fully recommend Burnout Paradise to those not interested in racing games. The crashes are great, however the focus is still on getting from point A to point B, so if you’re not into that kind of thing, perhaps try the demo just to be sure. For fans of Need for Speed and Flatout, however, this is almost a must-have addition to your gaming library. If you can look past some of the issues like race grinding, lousy soundtrack options and a horribly confusing menu, Burnout Parade: The Ultimate Box is a great first entry of the series on the PC, and a great arcade racer on its own. With a demo being available, which is a rarity these days on our platform, you owe it to yourself and Criterion Games to check the game out.
Our ratings for Burnout Paradise on PC out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Performance
(Show PC Specs)
CPU: Intel Core i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB
RAM: 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB
RAM: 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
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