Electronic Arts goes back to Paradise City with a brand-new remaster of BURNOUT PARADISE for the current generation, and it’s still a fun game that looks and plays amazing.
I’ve spent a good amount of time racing around since the BURNOUT PARADISE REMASTER was released on Playstation 4 and XBox One on Friday. That’s a lot of hours of races around Paradise City, discovering short cuts and crazy jumps and getting into races and road rage battles with other cars. When I originally played the game back in 2008, I’ll admit I was underwhelmed. I was hoping for the same kind of experience as 2004’s BURNOUT 3: TAKEDOWN, the first game in the series I played.
PARADISE took out the Crash mode from the previous game and, honestly, it was a little disappointing. But I’m a little more removed from the third game now, so I have a little more perspective going into this game. I will admit, though, despite my memories of disappointment 10 years ago, I was EXCITED about the remaster. Turns out, I was right to be excited about the game, because it is beautiful.
The concept of the game is pretty simple: you drive a car around Paradise City and you get into races and street-level demolition derbies as you try and avoid crashes and discover new cars. Paradise City is open world and there are no set courses to follow during races. You can go down highways, side streets, bridges, off road and even onto an air field. The scenery around Paradise City was obviously upgraded for high-resolution 4K TVs and everything looks amazing, from the buildings to the trees to the water surrounding the city.
You know what else looks amazing? The crashes. Pieces of cars going everywhere, tires falling off, windows shattering. It all looks great.
Yeah, the game looks good, and thankfully it plays just as well. I am terrible at current-gen racing games and, for the most part, I avoid them. I suck at Grand Theft Auto. The Batmobile parts of Batman: Arkham Knight gave me fits – especially the Riddler Races. It’s just not my gaming strong point. But BURNOUT PARADISE makes it easy. It helps that the whole point of the game is getting into crashes, I suppose, but you still need to be able to get around the city without completely destroying your car. It’s nice that I’m able to do that without throwing my controller down to the floor in complete frustration.
BURNOUT PARADISE REMASTER also provides all the DLC from the original game, including four “legendary” cars based on the Delorean from Back to the Future, the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard and KITT from Knight Rider. Each of the legendary cars has their own strengths for various parts of the game, but all four are fun to tool around in, and it’s nice having them right out of the box instead of having to pay extra for them.
It’s been 10 years since BURNOUT PARADISE was released but the remaster is a great experience for racing game fans and novices, and it makes me want a new game in the series.