This is one of the most aggravating games i have ever played. You play in a giant sandbox world map. In order to start a race or event. You must find a stop light and spin your wheels. This sounds like a good idea, need for speed with Burnout gameplay. I understand some people like this, but to me, it does nothing but slow the game down. Driving around the city finding lights which offer events respective to your car type is just a pain in the ass. If you come across a race or event that requires you use a different car. You must drive to a junkyard and replace your car, to the one respective to the race event you want to participate in. This wouldn't be entirely bad if you could use map markers showing you where to go. This brings me to one of the worst aspects of the game...,the map.
You have a small (standard) map on your HUD. This is usually cluttered with dozens of white lines, making it impossible to determine a vaild shortcut in the heat of a race. You also have to find gas stations, junkyards and repair shops to either refill your boost meter, acquire a different car or repair your damage.
It is usually harder than it needs to be to identify the colored icons to these specific outlets. They have a tendency to blend in. Most other games allow you to access the world map in the options screen and allow you to mark a specific area on the map with a marker. This marker is generally highlighted on your HUD in a bright and distinctive color. Unless, i havent realized how, you cannot do this in the game. Driving across the city to a junkyard just to acquire the specific car needed for a certain race is just unacceptable. Considering that you need to change cars quite often, you should be able to warp to these locations from your map screen. It just slows down the fast paced gameplay that Burnout is known for.
The other two things which have taken away from any fun that could have been had in this game are, The camera options and lack of restart. You have two camera options in the game, default or first person. Who uses first person..,i will never know. The default camera is set so extremely low to the ground you are looking directly, as though you are standing behind your car. You see such a small portion of the on coming traffic. When the cars often blend into the environments and graphics this makes things all the more frustrating. This doesnt make things challenging....,just hard and annoying. Most racing games have three different camera sets. High, medium and default (low) The previous Burnout games had a low sitting camera, but not this low.
Perhaps, the most annoying and surprising aspect of this game is the absence of the restart option. In previous installments of Burnout, you had the option to restart the race and event at any time. This was always especially helpful in burning laps. For some reason, The developers took this option away. You can no longer restart in mid race or event. This makes finding short cuts a chore rather than fun. Lets say, you are on a burning lap (route). You have 2 mins to get across the city. You have a bad start, maybe, you crash into something and you know you will not be able to make it. You can't restart until time runs out.
This game sacrificed the fun, fast and viscerale arcade experience for a more sim experience...,FVCK THAT
So this new update sounds interesting: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/39268.html
Motorcycles, weather effects and day and night cycle. And all for free for once.
So since my friend just got Paradise I begun playing this game again. It's a hell of a lot more fun now that I have someone to play with online, and also I've gotten over the initial overwhelming effect of having such a big open world, and everything go more smooth now.
Just managed to get every Billboard, Super Jump and Smashes.
Also, there's coming a huge DLC next year (this one is priced unfortunatley), which will add the big island back into the game: http://www.criteriongames.com/packs/island.php
What do ya all think of the new Big Surf Island DLC? I think it looks very cool; http://www.gametrailers.com/video/bsi-tearin-burnout-paradise/51514
as you see plenty of big jumps, definitley getting it when my 360 is back from Microsoft.