Burnout Paradise

We Love Katamari Burnout

Elsewhere, you've also got the option to try and beat the best time and best Showtime crash on every single street in the game by selecting the Road Rules option via the d-pad. While not necessarily integral to making progress, it's another way to kill time in a game already chock-full of tasks and challenges. There are also point-to-point races for specific cars, called Burning Routes, which in turn unlock even more cars, so the incentive to plough through them too is quite high if you're determined to truly mine the game for gamerpoints (for 360 owners, at least) and overall completion. However, particularly irritating is the fact that you can't simply skip to a menu and change to another car on the fly. In order to do so, you either have to drive to one of the five Junkyards dotted around the map, or switch the game off, reload and select your ride when you start. As a direct consequence of this tedious mechanic, I've hardly bothered to do any Burning Routes, because it's simply easier to go and do something else instead. It's puzzling why Criterion would ever think this was a good idea (the game, after all, stops to load in every single event, so I'm not sure why allowing you to do this would be any different), but in tandem with the no-restart policy, this hard-line attitude comes as no great surprise.

One thing definitely worthy of praise this time around is the seamless online implementation, which makes it extremely simple to dive into a multitude of multiplayer challenges without feeling like you're being hauled off into a completely different game. Because the whole city is fully unlocked for everyone right from the start, there are no arbitrary restrictions on where you and can't go, merely a decision to make on how many players you want to team up with, and which car you want to use (from your own unlocked selection). If you simply want to 'Freeburn' around the streets with pals, attempting to find more barriers and billboards to smash through, or more Super Jumps to discover, then that's fine. If you want to beat your friends' Road Rules times and crash totals, you can do that too. If you have a camera attached, when you beat their score you can send them a 'Smugshot' to rub it in a bit more. In addition to a myriad of challenges specific to the number of players in the game, you can also go for ranked or unranked races for up to eight players. Admittedly the servers were a tad barren when we went online yesterday, but the whole thing seemed silky smooth and lag free, so it's definitely something to try out if you have the option.

Speed racer

In technical terms, Criterion has come up with something extremely special, which puts to bed any lingering fears of its ability to tackle the new generation of consoles. Running without a hitch at 60 frames-per-second on both systems, it's a beautiful-looking game whether you're running it on an old CRT warhorse or a brand new 1080p monster. The lighting techniques and the use of colour are terrific, with subtle, beautiful effects that create a distinct ambience in-keeping with the feel and character of the previous games. There's no sense that the team is trying too hard to show off new techniques, instead delivering a grittily pretty environment that's as intricate and thoughtful as any we've seen in an openworld game.

The cars, too, have a rough and ready feel, often beaten up but still attractive in their own way. Crashes and crash replays have that same familiar wince-worthy impact - aided and abetted by typically lavish attention to detail on the audio front. If you want a game to show off a new AV set-up to its full punchy, face-wobbling potential, then you won't go far wrong with Burnout Paradise. The only slight minus point is, again, DJ Atomika himself (although, to be fair, he stops short of being unbearably cheesy) and some questionable soundtrack choices, including what appears to be every in-house track from every Burnout to date. Thumbs up for Adam and the Ants and LCD Soundsystem, though. You can never have too much Stand & Deliver in your life, I find. Da Diddly Qua Qua, indeed.

Anyway, there's no doubt that Burnout Paradise is a fine arcade racing game that will once again attract a strong following from a discerning audience prepared to live with it and get used to its intricacies. Every mode (apart from, at a push, Showtime) works brilliantly, and with a great online mode seamlessly woven into the game, there's an awful lot to love about this openworld reinvention of Burnout. What's abundantly obvious is that the more time you're prepared to invest, the better it eventually becomes, and the less some of its irritating design oddities will bother you. In truth, I would have preferred to select events on the fly, change vehicles on a whim, and restart failed events when I choose, but nor is it a deal-breaker that these features have been omitted. Once you (reluctantly) adapt to the demands of the game, a massive amount of fun awaits.