s u d 0 says...Nothing too deep, just some first impressions of Burnout Paradise. We've all seen the demo to one extent or another. Personally I didn't play it much and more or less bought the game on a whim.
It's real drop-in-and-drive stuff, once you get past the more or less enforced hand-holding period. There is an option to turn the assistance off, but it does offer a few valuable tips and DJ Atomica (or Atomickitten as my brain's auto-complete suggests every time he says his name) quietens down quickly.
You start off with one wreck available to you in the Junk Yard but your 'car-senal' quickly expands as you gain new wrecks either through prizes, upgrades (Burning Routes furnish you with a pimped version of your current model), or by attacking and Taking Down the curious visitors who come to Paradise to check you out. The latter method is an interesting and novel unlock mechanism that often turns a casual cruise into a balls-out, foot-down careen around town.
Offline you're working to upgrade your license category through winning various types of events: Stunt Runs, Races, Burning Routes, Marked Man, etc. All these events take place in the fully populated cityscape or it's surrounding environs and each event corresponds to an intersection. Each license class requires so many wins for an upgrade.
In addition to the set events you are free to simply cruise around, set Road Rules or take some time out with the incongruous but fun Showtime mode which is like an ultra-steerable crash mode: as long as you have Boost you can roll up and down the road crashing into vehicles to replenish boost and earn points and multipliers. Boost can also be used for a Ground Break which sees your wreck flying up in the air in a most unlikely fashion.
Car types fall into three categories - Race, Stunt and Aggression, but I haven't really found any barrier to entering races in my favourite stunter, either built into the code or performance-wise, but that might change as you work up through the license classes.
Criticism of the offline game seems to center around the fact that there is no restart race or replay race, but in my experience this hasn't yet proven a problem as there is so much to do that you just drive to the nearest intersection and do something else. I can see how it might become frustrating if, for example, you were attempting a specific Burning Route for a car upgrade, or you have completed almost all the events in your class and have to drive miles to return to the start.
Simplicitly says...The online mode for the game is a world in itself. I never really got into Test Drive Unlimited, so don't know much about it other than what I experienced at s u d 0's - and that was an experience where the other players didn't seem to show up on my screen despite being on top of their GPS signal, so I was a bit apprehensive about the BP persistent world. Happily, it is rock-solid.
You can join other players' online sessions or create your own - setting limits like player count - a maximum of 8 drivers can share Paradise City at any one time, with 'Open' games allowing people to drop in and out at will, or Invite-only limiting it to drivers of your choice.
Your choice of cars online is limited to those you have unlocked in single player, so it is worth winning a couple of offline awards prior to going online if you are planning to do any actual racing. The startup motor is actually pretty good for getting to know your way around, though.
There are fundamentally four major things you can do once online. The first is just to tool around in the freeburn mode - you can take this as seriously or light-heartedly as you choose, with ongoing records for things like drifting, jump distance, airtime, burnouts performed and oncoming traffic distances, which you can attempt to beat in any part of the City. There is an achievement for concurrently having the best scores in 6 of the categories available, and you'll find some players aiming for this. In freeburn you can also pursue online rivalries by taking down your fellow city-dwellers.
Secondly there are the challenges - 350 challenges designed to be completed by teams of players co-operatively - they are broken down into team-size groups, so some are designed for 2 players, and there are categories of challenges to be completed by 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 players. These can vary from things like 'everyone use 10 seconds of boost' to 'Team must get a total of 160 jumps on the ramps on the big bridge' (This one was for 8 players). These can be fun and rewarding, and a good way of getting to know your online compatriots, who seem a pretty chilled bunch of players, for the most part.
Thirdly you can engage in online races - either start-to-finish or checkpoint-controlled races. Here you will discover that even with a fairly paltry selection of cars from single player, you can still compete with the monster cars with a little skill and care. Every race is preceded with a few stat-facts about some of your rivals - things like 'bullmaster2182 has 72 online takedowns', or 'ringrimmer360 has won 11 online races'. Which is a nice touch. As s u d 0 mentioned, the cars tend to have strengths and weaknesses rather than out-and-out speed differences, and this makes for much closer, much more nail-biting racing, but the sense of fun is still apparent as you can use all the knowledge of shortcuts you have acquired, and apply the occasional judicious takedown for good measure.
Fourthly there are 'Road Rules', split into 2 categories of 'Time Rules' which are 'fastest person to drive along this road' rules, and then 'Showtime Rules' - Showtime is a form of crash mode that lets you katamari-bounce your car over the traffic of Paradise City, hitting buses for multipliers and attempting to rack up the highest 'showtime score'. These 'Rules' are then saved, and you can attempt to come back and try and beat everyone on your friends list, or even in the whole world, by driving faster or crashing harder than they do.
As a quick example of the freeform nature of the lunacy, s u d 0, BigUpStu and Simplicitly were happily out cracking through the list of 3 player challenges when one challenge directed us to perform a certain amount of drift at the airport. Foot to the floor, Simplicitly came upon a 'barrel roll' ramp at the top of a high ramp section, and the next 15 minutes were spent with the team attempting to get a double-barrel roll - a task made much harder by the aerial proximity of a crane, some ill-placed scenery and the fact that three cars won't go into one ramp.
s u d 0 says...I'd like to finish by pushing a button marked Roof Wars... It's not that it's overly similar to Midtown Madness, but there's something about the online challenge mode that makes me want to shout "To the roof!" and donut madly.
Pretty sure I'm going to be changing my gamertag soon. I noticed that I'm much more inclined to talk to specific people if they have a recogniseable, uncomplicated name, or obvious shortening. Most of yours are all cool, but I think mine causes confusion and I don't really like it that much any more either.
