Paradise Lost

Since I probably won't be posting tomorrow, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Second item of business this morning is to address the absence of a game from our top 10 list that two people have already voiced their concern over, Burnout Paradise. In fact, just about the entire Burnout series has been pretty damn good starting with the second game.

Crashing is fun. That is pretty much the takeaway from this series (I didn't include the first game as it didn't really establish what we think of as Burnout until the second entry) and they have done well evolving the idea so that each entry feels fresh to an extent. The latest entry, Burnout Paradise, made the most drastic departure, going for open-world exploration. I would consider this the top entry, but it does suffer from the overall single player setup, requiring you to drive to stoplights to start races.

The single player is also just a series of a few types of races, Road Rage being by far the best. After you 'level up' you then have to go and grind the same races as they are reset (except for the car specific ones). Repeat for each license class and it gets quite repetitive by the end.

The multiplayer has challenges specific to each number of players, 2-8. The problem with this is that it often changes on the fly, with people joining or leaving the game, making progress a bit of a crapshoot. In fact, it was so unfocused that I actually sold the game after getting it and making little progress. I later re-bought the game (the addition of a race restart was quite welcome) and played it a bit more with friends, which really brought out the fun. If you don't have others online to play with, or the correct amount of friends after you have finished the 2 or 3 player challenges, it isn't all that much fun however.

The catch with this is that I picked up the PS3 version due to that being the better version (and the one you can share DLC on). On a game this focused on online, it is troubling playing with anyone but your friends due to the voice chat. I think only 10% of the people I met playing the game, if that, had a mic. When you are trying to coordinate a large challenge this can be a complete pain in the ass.

DLC support is another aspect of the game that started as a large positive and then switched to almost a negative. The game was supported quite a bit for free with regular updates for about a year after launch. Maybe this created unrealistic expectations, but suddenly the DLC not only had a price tag but a steep one. Want a couple new cars? They were anywhere from $3-6 EACH. I would have preferred they maybe priced the original bikes pack at $5-7 and used that money to offset the cost of anything after that. The party pack that was released was also complete crap. I've heard Big Surf Island is some good DLC, but by the time it came out I just didn't want to drop the $$$ on it.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the game, but it is tough for any multiplayer-centric game to work on PS3. On the flip side, the 360 version was slightly inferior but much easier to find people with mics. I actually knew multiple people that bought both versions due to this. Looking back on Burnout Paradise I am glad I gave it a second chance, but it has too many shortcomings for me to include it on an all-decade list.