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REVIEW: BURNOUT PARADISE REMASTERED (PS4, XBOX ONE - PS4 VERSION TESTED)

22/3/2018

24 Comments

 
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GUEST REVIEW BY SUPER BAD ADVICE

When I was a kid, I had a friend who really, really loved Guns ‘n’ Roses. So much so, after he went to see them live he almost exclusively wore a vile tour t-shirt he bought. It featured a terrible drawing of a half-nude, partially dismembered zombie lady with enormous boobs who’d been tied to a pole for some reason.
 
It was, as the description hopefully imparts, utterly repellent. Yet, he wore it everywhere – even once to a wedding reception. In fact, it would only have been marginally more offensive if it had been a cartoon of Hitler kicking Gandhi in the teeth while simultaneously wiping his bum on the Turin shroud.
 
However, it also happened to have a verse of the song ‘Paradise City’ on it (the t-shirt, not the Turin shroud). This turned out to be a godsend, as my friends and I finally got this guy to stop wearing it by repeatedly singing “’Take me down to Welwyn Garden City’, ‘I haven’t got a car’ ‘Oh that’s a pity!’” at him.

Despite that being a rubbishly innocuous jibe, we soon discovered our dissing his favourite band made him inexplicably furious. Of course, as we were teenagers and thus terrible human beings we all found this hilarious, so we kept it up until he eventually crumbled and wore something less grim to stop the mockery.

 
The moral of that story though? Never take yourself too seriously when you’re not doing (or wearing) something remotely serious in the first place. And that, ladies and/or gents, is kinda why Burnout Paradise: Remastered is long overdue and so very much appreciated.
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​NO DEVIATION  
Driving games, see, have for reasons unknown been divided into 2 categories with almost no deviation from type for what feels like the best part of a decade - which would be about right, given BP:R originally came out 10 years ago.
 
On the one hand, you have your sim-heavy efforts. You know the sort: games where you have 9 billion real-world car variants recreated in such detail it took 20 programmers over 6 months to create the 3D key fob models. Yes, you can probably tweak everything upwards of the wattage of the bulb that illuminates the glove compartment to your liking, but these games are as follows: boring.
 
On the other hand, you have your ‘Fast & Furious’ knock-offs. Stupid, brash games with some mindless plot (usually about an undercover cop, or a heist, or an undercover cop reluctantly pulling off a heist) and lots of missions, tasks and plot-regurgitating cutscenes. These games are also this: boring.
 
Both categories have something in common though: their clinical and cynical po-facedness. It’s all about the most cars rendered most accurately, or the most races, or the most perfectly recreated city street.
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SHEER ESCAPISM
​At some point, developers seem to have forgotten gaming is best when it’s sheer escapism, and further when it doesn’t try and force you to empathise and bond with a bunch of tedious ‘cool’ characters who have all the depth of a sheet of A4.
 
Where’s the fun? Where’s the messing about mid-race with your mates just for the heck of it? Where’s the speed that makes your eyes water? Where’s blowing up a lorry with a flaming wreck, then being back underway in a race seconds later? I’ll tell you where it is: in this game, thank criminy.
 
Turns out Burnout Paradise wasn’t just ahead of its time with its fusion of old-school arcade action and an open world. It was effectively the end of time, as it’s still one of the best interpretations of how to do it. All the good stuff, none of the faff. And this version is the best interpretation of that interpretation, so to speak.
 
The main game is here of course, with polished-up graphics (not a full rework like Shadow of the Colossus, but still perfectly adequate given the speed you’ll be looking at them shift) and all the DLC – and that’s a lot. And, of course, online play, offline play and an absolute ton of stuff to do, find and set records for.
 
Yes, it’s simple: drive fast, take your opponents out, and win. But the driving action Criterion made their name with is still absolutely spot on, and at the top levels the sensation of speed is phenomenal. Most of all, it’s pure, absolute fun.
 
Sure, all the cars may be made up. But for the 99.999% of us who mercifully aren’t hungerpunching manbaby J. Clarkson, this makes no difference whatsoever. I couldn’t tell you with any confidence whether the handling or interior of a Ferrari XP-9Fx track edition was realistic in a game or not, because I’m never, ever going to drive one. For all I know it could be the inside of a bus.
 
Similarly, and just as pointlessly, why insist on bolting a crappy story onto a driving game?
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MINDLESS POPCORN
​In a mindless popcorn film it might work as a loose device to hold together stunt sequences, but a driving game should be first and foremost about driving – I couldn’t care less whether ‘Mendoza’ has ‘disrespected your crew’ so revenge now needs to be taken via a series of ever-more lurid street races. If you’re so fussed about bloody Mendoza, you’ve got a car. Run his cat over or something.
 
I only have 2 reservations, really: a brand new, proper Burnout game would of course be even better, and it’s not the holy grail that would be a full beans ground-up remake of the greatest driving game of all time (obviously that’s Burnout 3: Takedown – and no, that’s not up for debate).
 
But: the fact a 10-year-old game feels like a breath of fresh air shows that the driving game genre is in desperate need of a kick up the trunk (or, as we call it in the UK of course, the ‘car anus’).
 
It may have been up on bricks in a shed since 2008, but with barely more than a new paint job Burnout Paradise roars back past the current bunch of limp pretenders to the racing throne.

Horrrsseepowerrrrrrr!!! (That’s what Clarkson says when he’s aroused by Hammond or May, right?)
Super Bad Advice
 
SCORE: 95 RON Unleaded out of 99 RON Unleaded. 
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24 Comments
Paul
22/3/2018 08:38:41 am

Gleefully, I can say that the games that are boring have one point of interest for me: they do tend to have the car I currently own. This is good, because it's the only time in my life that I can claim that.

However, get this: claims of simulated realism seems to end at the point where the carbon the game doesn't behave like the car in teal life. Result: me shouting "you've got it wrong!".

Conclusion: boring games are boring.

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MENTALIST
22/3/2018 12:47:10 pm

I must admit that I bought a secondhand copy of Forza 4, inbetween ordering my latest real car and picking it up, purely because it had that model of car in it.

There's quite the strange pleasure in racing around a simulated version of your real car, and I'd only had it once before in Metropolis Street Racer, which was full of very ordinary cars, that then failed to make the performance grade of PGR, when the series moved to Xbox.

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NIALL MAGUIRE
22/3/2018 08:46:48 am

Was very tempted to get this but still have the PS3 connected upstairs and have a copy of the game. Really would love a new game though, hopefully this leads to one as I think this remaster has done quite well.

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Spiney O’Sullivan
22/3/2018 10:08:03 am

SBA, thank you for having the empirically correct opinion about Burnout 3: Takedown.

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Neptunium
22/3/2018 10:18:53 am

I liked this review. I liked it a lot. I was playing Gamecube Burnout 2 earlier in the week and was quite amazed how well it's held up for a game that's fifteen years old - the graphics are decent (albeit low resolution) but there is no question that it's a solid racer with an interesting twist. It's quite amusing seeing a decade old racer be rereleased (and, I get the impression that little has been done to "tart" it "up") and still achieve rave reviews.

I'm on my knees praying daily that the rumours of a new Ridge Racer are true. I do think the world is weary of Gran BOREismo, BOREza Motorsport et al. and the public are ready to clench a new mindless arcade racer to their bosoms. There's nothing quite as glorious as sliding unbelivably around corners as in those games.

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Klone
22/3/2018 10:38:30 am

Your impression is ill-gotten (wrong)
See Digital Foundry for further details and ten lashes.

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Neptunium
22/3/2018 02:49:15 pm

I don't know what to believe, man. The DF article talks about improved textures and disabling of motion blur, which sound OK I guess, but all the comments say "£35 for nearly no improvements, what a crock grumble grumble". I reckon I'd not notice the differences until they're painstakingly pointed out to me by someone in a lab coat with an authoritative pointy stick.

Thom Yorke
22/3/2018 04:47:59 pm

Burnout 2 is still one of my favourite games of all time for one specific reason. That bloody brilliant dynamic soundtrack. Other games have tried similar things but nothing has ever made it work like Point of Impact. Try this, go have a race round Heartbreak Hills, drive around getting pumped up letting your nitro build then hit it at THAT (you'll know the time) point in the music. There's nothing else like it.

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Furgun Zork
22/3/2018 10:40:52 am

Further to what Paul says above, what ruins the immersion of hyper-real racers with painstaking attention to detail and all the real-world licenced cars is that the people who’ve licensed the car won’t allow the car models to be, say, damaged in a crash or sometimes even slow down in a crash, or lose traction if you take a corner badly, or leave the track and end up in a hedge if you go over a hill too fast, or flip over if you take that weird chicane on top of a hill at Laguna Seca badly and too fast.

“Realism” is its own worst nightmare when tied to the requirements of corporations.

Also, don’t buy games with real gun names/models in, please. You’re funding the arms industry, Deborah.

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Split/Second FTW....
22/3/2018 10:59:28 am

Here's something I learned recently, thanks to being an Xbox 360-owning middle-age tightwad who's almost totally reliant on Games with Gold for 'new' games: Split/Second is the best racey/smashy/arcadey driving game in the world. It should be a literal crime that the follow-up was cancelled.

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Super Bad Advice
22/3/2018 11:08:22 am

Funnily enough, I was going to name Split/Second as an honourable mention - it was fun, different and overall 'dead good'. And now, sadly, just dead.

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Spiney O’Sullivan
22/3/2018 11:23:34 am

You might also like Blur. It’s basically Burnout with a ton of neon and Mario Kart weapons.

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MENTALIST
22/3/2018 12:57:22 pm

I dunno. Whilst playing it on GWG there, I kept finding myself thinking that I wished it worked more like Burnout. I think it's just the lack of boost power, it seemed very odd not to have that in an arcade racer.

Despite the fact that I have significant problems with Burnout Paradise (principally that getting lost when trying to race is NOT FUN), I ended up playing that for far longer when it came out on GWG in December 2016.

I've enjoyed the Forza Horizon games more than either though, despite the fact that their arcade elements are minimal. The cheaty-cheaty rewind helps. I liked the first one I got on GWG so much that I just bought the new one outright. Hopefully the second one will turn up this September, that seems to be the cadence, after Forza 5 last year.

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Split/Second FTW....
22/3/2018 02:58:18 pm

I've not played Burnout so I dunno what the 'boost power' is, but I assume something that boosts power. As it happens, Split/Second does have that, after a fashion: drafting. Basically, you speed up rather a lot by slipstreaming behind a car in front. Perhaps you already knew that, mind.

MENTALIST
22/3/2018 04:30:11 pm

What I mean is a turbo boost, or nitro, or mario kart mushroom boost that can be saved up and activated on demand.

It's probably because Split / Second is otherwise so very like pre-Paradise Burnout games (except with the environment used to crash rivals, rather than basing them), that my hindbrain believes it is one.

Sonicshrimp
23/3/2018 06:39:57 am

I really enjoyed split second when it first released - so got it as soon as it came on GWG. It didn't grab me as much this time around but perhaps all of the forza and the 196 need for speed titles in between made it hardernfornotnto stand out as much to me now. Agree that a sequel that tweaked on the first would have likely been great fun.

I remember what I was going to say now. Motorstorm series was really rather fun. I think it is the most I've enjoyed online racing due to the different classes of vehicles all taking different routes/trying to force others players into a exploding volcano

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Craig Anderson link
22/3/2018 12:59:02 pm

One of my favourite driving games was Midtown Madness on the original Xbox. I do enjoy driving games, but you can't beat a game of Tag, or Capture The Flag in a VW Beetle.

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Neptunium
22/3/2018 02:51:42 pm

Midtown Madness 2 on the original Xbox was superb, basically "Mario Kart: Battle - the game, but with real cars and in Paris", The only thing I disliked was the "trash talk" from the other players. Eww.

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LeighDappa
22/3/2018 01:37:16 pm

I too prefer Arcade Racing over Realistic Simulation and a Game I LOVED and played to death was 'Test Drive: Unlimited 2'.
It was a mix of both.
I hope they either re-release this Game or make 'TD:U3'.

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Nick
22/3/2018 03:39:43 pm

Lovely review. Like many of these remakes/re-releases I've still got the last gen version somewhere in the backlog to play.
You're completely correct about Burnout 3. A ground up remake would be most welcome. Without the bloody commentator.

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Spiney O’Sullivan
22/3/2018 06:10:18 pm

Poor DJ Stryker. It must be hard to be a DJ who’s somehow even more widely hated than most of the ones employed by Radio 1.

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Nick
22/3/2018 10:18:22 pm

That was his name. I'd forgotten. God damn him to hell!

Turning a perfectly nice game about forcing your fellow racers into oncoming traffic into a bloodsport.

James May
26/3/2018 01:51:40 pm

I like car games where you can change the bulbs or wiper blade types.

Did you know the original Honda Civic came with a 13 watt bulb, however all of the dealerships changed them to 10 watt bulbs as as they were cheaper and sold the 13 watt bulbs at local markets?

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Danofthewibble
4/4/2018 12:30:30 pm

The last truly fun new racing game was Blur, from the last generation. Burnout crossed with Mario Kart. Criminally underplayed, but so good that a sequel was in development and to give the other games a chance they closed the whole studio instead of finishing it.

I want Blur 2. Or at least Blur remastered.

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