Burnout Paradise continues to be the gold-standard of open-world racing
Burnout Paradise landed in Europe on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC 15 years in the past at the moment, setting a brand new benchmark and laying the inspiration for a brand new era of open-world racing. It’s arguably the final nice arcade racer earlier than the style’s recognition died away.
Regardless of its age, Criterion’s basic nonetheless places trendy open-world racers to disgrace due to its masterful map design, seamless on-line multiplayer, and chaotic racing.
To have fun its fifteenth anniversary, we’re taking a visit again to Paradise Metropolis and looking out again on the legacy of Criterion’s open-world basic.
The final word driving playground
By the mid-2000s, Burnout was dominating arcade racing, with Burnout 3: Takedown and Burnout Revenge reaching industrial success and common acclaim.
For the following sport, Criterion Video games took Burnout in a daring new course. Changing the fastened tracks of the primary three Burnout video games was an enormous open world set within the fictional Paradise Metropolis.
EA was initially reluctant for Burnout to go open world, however the gamble paid off. Inside three months, Burnout Paradise bought over a million copies and plenty of followers regard it as the head of the franchise. It’s not onerous to see why.
Open-world racers are nothing new anymore since Forza Horizon popularised the style. However whereas trendy open-world racers concentrate on scale, Burnout Paradise places enjoyable on the forefront.
Paradise Metropolis appears small in comparison with trendy open-world video games, however it’s a lot extra pleasing to discover. Maps like Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico and The Crew 2’s recreation of the US are big, however they’re empty and forgettable with little to do.
Distinction this with Paradise Metropolis the place there are memorable landmarks in every single place and new actions on each avenue nook. With each site visitors mild junction beginning an occasion, you by no means acquired bored. These ranged from customary races to Highway Rage occasions difficult you to smash into as many opponents as you’ll be able to within the allotted time.
Together with customary races, new occasion varieties took benefit of the open world. Tony Hawk-style Stunt Runs noticed you carry out and chain collectively drifts, boosts, and close to misses to get the best rating, whereas tense Marked Man occasions had you escaping to a vacation spot whereas aggressive rival automobiles in your tail making an attempt to take you out.
Billed as “the final word driving playground,” Paradise Metropolis was full of secret places to find, billboards to interrupt, and jumps to search out, encouraging you to discover and have enjoyable whereas doing it.
Each avenue even had its personal time file to beat in opposition to your pals. Final 12 months’s Want for Velocity Unbound, additionally developed by Criterion, inherited a few of Burnout Paradise’s DNA with you searching billboards and collectables in Lakeshore Metropolis.
A seamless open world
Burnout Paradise was designed to be rapid. As soon as the sport booted up, there are not any menus or loading screens breaking the immersion.
In contrast to most open-world racers on the time like Rockstar’s Midnight Membership, there are not any checkpoints to information you – it was as much as you to search out the quickest path to the end line. This proved divisive because it was straightforward to get misplaced, take a improper flip, and lose a race. If you happen to wished to win, you needed to memorise the map inside out.
The sense of enjoyable and freedom is greatest showcased within the revolutionary on-line multiplayer. Establishing on-line races was a chore in most racing video games on the time, with you typically spending extra time ready impatiently in lobbies for the occasion to begin than racing.
In Burnout Paradise, on-line lobbies had been changed with an built-in menu known as Simple Drive. Faucet the d-pad, and Simple Drive popped up within the nook of the display screen as you drove with out pausing the sport, at all times protecting you within the motion.
From there, you can immediately leap into a web-based match, seamlessly join with different gamers populating the world, and meet up with pals on the press of a button. Its addictive multiplayer put Burnout Paradise forward of its time – Forza wouldn’t pull off the identical feat till Forza Horizon 2 in 2014.
Check Drive Limitless had already pioneered “Massively Open On-line Racing” with gamers in a position to discover the unique island two years earlier. However it could not match the variability and limitless enjoyment of getting into Paradise Metropolis on-line.
As much as eight gamers may race on-line, cruise the streets, or fiddle crashing into one another. Nothing beat the satisfaction and hilarity of executing a well-timed takedown and seeing your rival’s shocked response in mugshots captured from the console’s USB digital camera.
On-line occasions weren’t simply aggressive both. There have been additionally over 300 cooperative challenges generally known as Freeburn to sort out resembling working collectively to realize a sure leap distance.
Urge for food for destruction
No Burnout sport is full with out metal-crunching crashes. Earlier than Wreckfest and BeamNG Drive set new requirements for vehicular destruction, the injury mannequin in Burnout Paradise was probably the most detailed ever seen in a racing sport.
Bodywork bent out of form on affect, windscreens shattered, and wheels would fly off. Each crash was an epic occasion, with dramatic digital camera angles exhibiting off the destruction in wonderful gradual movement.
Amplifying the destruction was a brand new mode known as Showtime, which changed Burnout’s staple Crash mode. Profiting from the open world, Showtime may very well be triggered at any time.
This triggered your automotive to flip into the air and tumble down the highway as you tried to wreck as many site visitors automobiles in your path till you misplaced momentum. Whereas Showtime was much more chaotic than the standard Crash mode, it lacked the tactical problem of the old-timed occasions.
The enjoyable continued lengthy after launch as Criterion supported Burnout Paradise with a 12 months’s price of free DLC. Even earlier than undesirable microtransactions and paid season passes plagued the video games trade at the moment, Criterion’s generosity was unprecedented.
Free updates added motorbikes to the sequence for the primary time, together with a neighborhood multiplayer celebration mode, a day and night time cycle, and a number of automotive packs. These allow you to tear round Paradise Metropolis in all the pieces from tiny toy automobiles and cop automobiles to automobiles replicating well-known Hollywood rides together with the Basic Lee, KITT, and a hovering DeLorean.
However the most effective replace was saved for final. Launched as premium DLC, the Large Surf Island Pack expanded the unique map with a brand new stunt-filled island to discover plus 9 new automobiles and extra on-line challenges.
Return to Paradise
Gamers returned to Paradise Metropolis ten years later with the discharge of Burnout Paradise Remastered, an enhanced model of the unique for PS4, Xbox One and PC with uprated 4K visuals, a 60fps body charge, and all DLC included. Because of backward compatibility on trendy consoles, that is the easiest way to play Burnout Paradise.
Even the unique soundtrack is included, so you’ll be able to nonetheless race by means of site visitors to the tune of Avril Lavigne’s grating Girlfriend tune – good luck getting that earworm out of your head. It is also onerous to not affiliate Weapons n Roses’ anthemic Paradise Metropolis with the sport after it grew to become the Burnout Paradise theme tune.
Sadly, apart from the remaster and the forgotten 2011 Burnout Crash! spin-off, the Burnout sequence has remained dormant for 15 painful years. Paradise ended the sequence on an enormous excessive, however followers are incessantly begging EA for a brand new Burnout sport.
Criterion needs to deliver again Burnout, however EA is frustratingly reluctant to revive the sequence and greenlight a sequel. That is seemingly attributable to Want for Velocity producing larger gross sales for EA than Burnout previously. However with Unbound underperforming, it is time for Burnout to return.
Bringing again the spirit of Burnout
Whereas we could by no means get an official Burnout sequel, its spirit lives on in Three Fields Leisure, an indie studio based by Burnout co-creators Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry.
After the Hazard Zone video games reinvented Crash Mode, the small workforce launched Harmful Driving in 2019 as a non secular successor to Burnout 3: Takedown.
However the workforce’s subsequent challenge is shaping as much as be the Burnout Paradise successor we’ve been ready for. Enter Wreckreation, a promising new open-world racer from the creators of Burnout with a concentrate on customisation, exploration, and destruction.
Like Burnout Paradise, Wreckreation lets gamers race, crash, and carry out loopy stunts in a sprawling open world.
Taking this idea additional, gamers can work collectively to create customized sport modes and tracks, with the power to edit tracks and add obstacles from ramps to large rubber geese on the fly whereas different gamers race. It’s like Burnout and Trackmania had a child.
With the unique Burnout creators on the helm, we’re hoping Wreckreation can reinvent open-world arcade racing like Burnout Paradise did 15 years in the past. After Want for Velocity Unbound did not set gross sales figures on hearth, it may very well be the arcade racer’s final hope.
