Burnout Paradise demo, up!

[Lorrac]

Graphics are ok, nothing groundbreaking.

It's a free roaming city, you drive to specific points to start the races. I didn't see oponents to take down in the single player races, just time trials and acrobacy stunts so far.

Hitting d-pad transitions straight into online, no menus/loading/splash screen. Just the arrows with the other players pop in the map. Doing takedowns on each other is fun, but it's just 4 players. Also, the camera takes a shot when you receive a takedown, just the guy doing the takedown gets to see it - I gotta print goatse just for this feature.

[Cor]

Absolutely glorious.

I agree that the graphics aren't the best around, but it runs perfectly at 60fps with frame drops occuring very, very rarely.

It also wins the prize for the best online integration of any console game.

Can't wait for the full release.

[Delenar]

Bleh, have to wait until after work.

Always been a big burnout fan, looking forward to seeing this one.

[Murr]

I dig a lot of it but some of the magic seems gone.. hoping that the actual races will restore some of the sense of speed and that the faster cars will help in that respect too.

[Lorrac]

Originally Posted by Murr

I dig a lot of it but some of the magic seems gone.. hoping that the actual races will restore some of the sense of speed and that the faster cars will help in that respect too.

That's a consequence of the free-roaming world. It's much easier to tailor things to generate sense of speed on closed circuits. You just can't pull the same tricks against a city backdrop. Honestly, I'm not sure the open world thing will do much good for burnout. I can see it working with a lot of tweaking and design, but paradise is miles off it...

Also, I am totally digging the handbrake turning. You do it right you can evade people rushing you for a takedown - with some luck, they'll end up totalling themselves instead of bouncing off your car.

Btw, did you guys notice that need for speed and burnout have traded places? burnout used to be about closed races while need for speed about free-roaming areas. This year need for speed is a closed circuit game while burnout is the free roaming one.

[Suineg]

I wasn't really fond of the demo. The game I will probably like though.

Seemed to closed in. I also didn't like that I was wrecking every 10 seconds just roaming around looking for gates to smash and billboards to take out.

[Blide]

I must admit the removal of traffic checking through me off at first but overall it makes the game more difficult and realistic without it. On to the map, I really couldn't tell from seeing such a small area. The thing I liked about the previous Burnouts were how the tracks outside of the United States added a lot more variety but I can't tell if similar tracks are here. US tracks seemed to be overall more wide open and had less traffic, Asia had a crap load of traffic and tight streets, then Europe had the brutal turns and unforgiving edges for takedowns. I bet some of that is in the game but how much and what quality is the question. It certainly does retain the feel of Burnout Takedown (Not Revenge) in the demo though but I'm still a bit skeptical of the free roaming thing but I'll likely buy it none the less.

Also I couldn't help but laugh at the CompUSA ads I saw when driving around considering they won't even be around long enough to sell this game Then my personal nitpick but the cars really should have a driver model of some sort.

[Cor]

Originally Posted by Blide

The thing I liked about the previous Burnouts were how the tracks outside of the United States added a lot more variety but I can't tell if similar tracks are here. US tracks seemed to be overall more wide open and had less traffic, Asia had a crap load of traffic and tight streets, then Europe had the brutal turns and unforgiving edges for takedowns. I bet some of that is in the game but how much and what quality is the question. It certainly does retain the feel of Burnout Takedown (Not Revenge) in the demo though but I'm still a bit skeptical of the free roaming thing but I'll likely buy it none the less.

We've only seen a little bit of the gameworld. If they put as much effort into the rest of the map as they did with the demo area, I think it'll be fine.

[Tripamang]

I played through it yesterday, was definitely fun imo. Defintely looking forward to the 22nd to pick this up.

The aspect it took to selecting your own route to win a race was rather refreshing, it gives a real sense of street racing.

[foddon]

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm probably not going to buy this. The worst idea they ever had was to not let you restart an event. Driving all the way back across the city to retry an event that I took one wrong turn on, causing me to lose, is not my idea of fun. Also I really don't like the idea of having to memorize the entire city layout in order to do well on races (or even not completely fuck them up).

It just doesn't feel like Burnout anymore to me (at least not like the last couple, don't know about the others). The douchebag from Criterion basically said that Burnout is all about changing and if you don't like it you can go fuck yourself. Well, I think I'm going to take him up on his offer.

[Blumpster]

Originally Posted by foddon

Well, I think I'm going to take him up on his offer.

Dude, fraps it.

[chaos]

I just got this last night, late to the party as always. It's pretty damn good, I really like the controls and how it feels, and the design of the city is AMAZING. Really well done. If the entire game is like this, no words for how awesome that will be. I'll buy the game of course, I am a huge Burnout fanboy. The only part I didn't like was the realization that I will have to actually learn all the streets and stuff, and that finding events you want is about goddamn impossible. It's fun now, because of all the new shit to find in the demo. I imagine when you are trying to perfect that race after release and you can't seem to remember the cross streets it will be annoying as fuck.

And what happened to the music? Revenge had some gay music but it was nice to have real background music.

[Delenar]

Originally Posted by foddon

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm probably not going to buy this. The worst idea they ever had was to not let you restart an event.

This alone is a dealbreaker for me and I fucking LOVE the burnout series.

[Del]

Then don't make it into a linear progression game. There is an event at EVERY single intersection.

[Araxen]

I've been playing the fuck out of the demo online. It's hella mad fun trying to take people out!