Burnout paradise is the newest game is the burnout series and the first game on this generation of consoles. A lot has changed since the older games but they have kept the features that made the old burnout games great and thought long and hard about the new features to create a great new return for the series.

Instead of the chapter style missions of older games it is a free roaming game with a pretty large map named, surprise, paradise city. To progress in this game you have choice of doing either races, road rage, a game involving escaping the police (even though they're not really the police) or a burning route which is just a cool name for a timed lap but they have got rid of the famous crash mode which i loved in the old games. It has been rplaced by a mode where by you can cause your car to go into an ultr unrealistic frenzy and crash through any street for a good 10 minutes destroying everything. Its fun but its not the old mode which was possibly my favourite feature of the previous games. You have a liscence that you add points to every time you complete an event which gets upraded from C to B and so forth. You win cars throughout the game by completeing burning routes, upgrading your liscence or taking out one of a few 'special' cars that roam around paradice city. The whole set up is engaging and there's plenty to do to keep you entertained for many hours. When in free roam you can go anywhere and there are sort of mini missions such as finding huge jumps and crasshing through gates not to mention a network of secret passages to be found. When not doing missions driving around paradise city is always fun. Annoyingly though if you fail a mission there is no option to restart it you have to either drive all the way back to the start of the race or just pick another.

I got about 30 hours of play out of this game and that was without any of the downloadable content that can be added for a small price from the playstation store. The largest of which is a whole new island to discover and although i never downloaded them but without a doubt it does add to the games durability. Although i played this game for a long time it was over a long period of time as i could never play it for more than about two hours straight just doing the same thing over and over. During the time i played it though i got to know all of paradise city and driving through the same streets began to lose its appeal after a while.

Paradise city is a beatiful place. A lot of though has gone into every little detail of the map and usually looks brilliant but because you are mostly hurtling around the streets at stupid speeds you wouldn't notice some of the textures around that are below average. I guess they thought as i do though, if your only going to be whizzing past it whats the point in making it perfect?

The map has been excellenty designed. Its split about half and half with a built up city area on one side and countryside and mountains on the other. Every bit of the map is a challenge weather its dodging cars through the streets of the city or drifting round bends in the mountains. There are also pretty much huge car play areas such as a quarry and an airfield with huge jumps and tracks.

The gameplay has changed very little from the last games. The same controls have stuck and the same fast paced action that the burnout series is recognised for have stuck too. Even with your first car being one of the worst models in the game you can be charging through the streets, drifting round bends and crashing into walls keeping the adrenaline running and making split second descisions to that keep you on your feet. As far as the crashing goes it is something that burnout is very very good at as its one of the main features in the game. When you crash into a wall at high speed the camera angle changes to go close up and into slow motion. The car acts just like a normal car would as the car crumples and, depending on your speed, will flip into the air a few times before coming to a smoking halt.

In my opinion this game is a step in the right direction for the burnout series even if they have got rid of the crash mode. None the less it is a beatiful game that has its downfall in places but i can let that slide when i dont really want to be standing still for too long. Its fun, fast paced and completely over the top which is everything burnout needs be.