Burnout™ Paradise

Welcome to Paradise

Take to the expansive streets of Paradise City for some insanely reckless driving in Burnout Paradise on PlayStation®3.

If you've never played a Burnout game before, you've missed out on some of the most nail-biting, thrill-packed driving action around. Mixing smooth, precise Gran Turismo-style racing with insane Grand Theft Auto-style disregard for personal safety, Burnout is a non-stop thrill ride from start to finish.

Take me down to the Paradise City

Burnout Paradise is the sixth game in the smash-hit series, with a host of brand new tracks, cars and challenges, along with some old features making a welcome return. The single player mode revolves around Paradise City, a huge, expansive game world with more than 250 miles of open road. Unlike previous Burnout games, you're free to explore Paradise City at your leisure, driving up into the hills to check out the views from Crystal Point, down to the beach to do some jumps along the Boardwalk or even just heading to the Wildcats baseball stadium to do donuts on the home plate.

Whenever you want to, you can approach a set of traffic lights and you'll be given the option of entering one of a number of different challenges. These include straightforward first-to-the-finish races, Road Rage events, where the aim is to cause as many of your opponents to crash as possible, and two brand new events, Marked Man, where you must make it to a specific point without getting wrecked by pursuers, and Stunt Run, where you must reach a points target by doing jumps, spins, flips and barrel rolls.

Events are a lot more free-form than before, letting you do things the way you want to. The invisible tracks that kept you on the right path in previous games have been done away with, meaning you take whatever route you want across Paradise City to achieve your goals, taking advantage of shortcuts and secret routes along the way. A handy mini map lets you know which direction you should be heading in, and your car's indicators will also blink when you approach a major turn to give you a little bit more help.

Junkyardin'

There are other new additions too - dotted around the city are petrol stations that you can drive through to refill your boost meter, respray shops that change the paintwork on your car and garages that repair any damage done to your car (particularly useful in Marked Man missions). As you complete missions, new cars will take to the streets of Paradise City. Spot these on your travels and you can take them down to send them to your junkyard and make them a driveable part of your car collection. There are over 70 cars in total for you to collect, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses, while falling into one of three categories: Stunt, Speed and Aggression. Each category has its own advantages and picking the right car for the right event is key to passing missions and upgrading your license.

The online mode is extremely easy to use and seamlessly integrated into the single-player game. Simply press the right button on the directional pad to be put into Freeburn mode where you can drive around the city with other online players, or just dive straight into an event. One particularly neat touch is the Mugshot feature for those with a PlayStation®Eye camera. When a player is taken down, both players will have their photos taken and exchanged. These photos can then be saved to the hard disk drive for maximum bragging rights.

Special mention must be given to the visuals of the game. Burnout Paradise looks incredible, with amazing lighting effects, gorgeous locations and a tangible sense of speed that makes hurtling into oncoming traffic at 200 miles an hour a beautiful and genuinely scary prospect. And of course, you can't clip the central reservation and spin off into a ravine in a hot ball of flaming wreckage without some decent musical accompaniment. Luckily Burnout Dominator has an explosive soundtrack that perfectly suits the game's frantic nature with great tracks from artists such as N.E.R.D, L.C.D. Soundsystem, Jane's Addiction and, naturally, Guns N' Roses. You can even leave the game unattended for a few minutes and the music will switch to the classical strains of Mozart or Beethoven while the camera pans around giving you cinematic views of Paradise City's gorgeous vistas, which provides a nice respite from the frantic racing action.