Burnout Paradise used to keep me up at night. “Just one more race!” I’d shout, which always meant at least three more. Trying to come up with as many silly faces as possible for Kinect when you performed a vertical takedown on your mates, it never got old.
For years, fans have been asking for Criterion games to remaster the game, it felt like it had fallen on death ears, but now, fans new and old can start the game up and be greeted by the familiar drums before you ears are shredded by Guns ‘n’ Roses.
Burnout Paradise Remastered brings together all the DLC released for the original game, all while bringing in the visuals up to 4K and 60fps. Xbox One X owners will notice how much sharper things look, even if you are just playing on the one, things will run nice and smoothly. It doesn’t look anywhere near as good as more modern titles like the Forza series but it still looks great.
New players to Burnout Paradise will possibly struggle to adapt to the style of racing, even as a seasoned Burnout fan it took me a while to get used to the speed of the game and how the cars handle. Once you are over that initial hurdle however you’ll have a vibrant city to race around. Depending on the type of car you are driving (they are separated between speed, stunt and aggression) you’ll notice differences in the handling, but all the cars are great to throw round corners at breakneck speed.
Races start at traffic lights, just pull up and rev your engine and the event will begin, there are normal races, and more specialised events like road rage and stunt races too. Learning the roads is the key in Paradise City as you won’t want to take your eyes of the road when racing. There are little visual indicators to let you know where you need to go, but the sooner you don’t need to rely on those the better. There are plenty of shortcuts to uncover, with billboards and gates to smash through as collectables. You are better discovering those outside of races because you can easily find yourself out of contention with one wrong turn.
There are a couple of annoyances that I suppose haven’t changed since the original, and maybe I didn’t notice them as much. First off is the camera, it’s pretty restrictive, I miss not being able to have a better view of the car and what’s around me, even trying to move the camera around you is pretty troublesome.
It’s also quite a pain to change your car, to do this you’ll need to visit the junk yard, but that can sometimes be a good few minutes out of your way, a fast travel option would have been great. All of the cars are available to you straight away in the remaster, which takes away the excitement of finishing races to unlock cars, an option to lock them all at the beginning would have been great for those who wanted an extra challenge.
There is no doubt that Burnout Paradise Remastered is fun, and that’s just playing buy yourself, however, things really pick up when you jump online with 7 of your friends. There are around 250 challenges that you can attempt with friends and they cater to how many people are available. Of course there are races and other events you can play against each other too.
Of course we can talk about Paradise without mentioning the soundtrack. Guns ‘n’ Roses kicking off the game before we let Avril Lavigne starts to tell us she doesn’t like our Girlfriend, it’s still one of the best soundtracks out there.
Burnout Paradise is still a brilliant game, it isn’t perfect, but it wasn’t perfect when it first released. I for one am glad I get to play it again in 4K with my friends and whether you are an old hand or completely new to the game, you will love it too.