Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

When I first started forming my thoughts for this review I had just finished my first license upgrade and was kind of just getting the feel for the game. Over all, at the time, I was pretty impressed with what I had experienced. A huge open world, some good graphics, a good soundtrack and many things to do/look for in the city of Paradise.

I took until about ½ way through my second license before I realized exactly how much they ruined this game.


Graphics:
The graphics, like I said, are "good" maybe even "great" when you are looking around at the city, and your vehicle. The graphics and effects during big crashes are even AWESOME at some points, it's just to bad that those points are few and far between. The single vehicle, or even two vehicle crash replays are nothing less then spectacular, but, it seems that there are only so many angles, or versions of replays so it feels like you end up watching the same kind of crash over and over again. At least the city is neat to look at.

Game Play:


As mentioned the open world is HUGE, with lots and lots of places to go and races to enter, I think I heard during the game that there are 120 intersections were you can pick up a race or challenge. There are also billboards to look for, and gates (short cuts) to find, this helps give the world its big open feeling.

Navigating your way around is "ok" but there are times when you are trying to race from one side of the city to another, and it can be difficult to follow a map and avoid collisions at the same time, there are no more arrows pointing in the direction you need to go.

There are a few different kind of races/challenges. You have the standard "thee who gets their first wins", then you have the "Try and get from point A to point B without dying" and you have your standard "Take Down" races that were seen in previous games. There is also a "Stunt" route where you basically just try to get as many points as you can before time runs out.

Now you have probably noticed one thing, and may even be asking yourself "what about the crash challenges" Well, there is where this game lost me. When I pick up a Burnout game I really look forward to taking my car and driving it as fast as possible into a intersection or group of vehicles to see how much damage I can rack up. Say "bye bye" what they did to this part of the game is flat out disastrous! It's called "Showtime" and it feels like (to me anyway) a weird play on Katamari! Now the whole point of the crash challenge is to just start the crash, and keep your car flying through the air crashing into any vehicle you can find. Yes, it's fun for maybe the first 2 times, and you can do it ANYWHERE in the city when ever you want, but the cool camera shots of the crash are gone, and it just is not the same as in past versions of Burnout where you have loaded trucks with their stuff flying all over the place…… -5 points right there, I did not buy this game for a mix of Midnight Club and Burnout.

I won't go into the multi player portion of this game for one simple reason. I can't, I stopped playing it before I got that far.