An awesome classic arcade, destruction filled, racer. One of the best of all time!

Burnout: Paradise is absolutely packed with content. Featuring over 120 events across 218 miles of drivable road, you’re looking at around 50+ hours of content at least to see full completion, and this isn’t including the short, optional time trials dedicated to nearly every road and junction in the game. For the most part, this content is an absolute blast: crashing into every billboard is thrilling and there are jumps, and dives in every corner of Paradise City. By far the best game-mode is ‘Marked Man’, which tasks you with reaching a destination while hunted by an armada of black cars. If you go too fast, the slightest nudge of them will spin you out – take it too slow, and your car won’t be able to take enough hits to survive to the end.

Races are generally good, and revolve mainly around map knowledge. Paradise City is loaded with countless shortcuts and intersections which will determine your ultimate placing: one good shortcut will likely decide whether you place #1 or #7, which can be both a positive and negative. Learning the routes of Paradise City is incredibly rewarding, yet towards the end-game you’ll face a tendency to overly rely on your pause-menu map due to just how critical nailing a shortcut is. You aren’t forced to adopt this strategy, but when you can’t instantly retry a race (this may now be patched) you’re at risk of facing serious tedium to retrace your steps.

Burnout: Paradise will be an instant hit of nostalgia to any 90s to early 2000s babies. You’ll know the lyrics to Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend like the back of your hand by the 10 hour mark, and the soundtrack is littered with Kerrang favourites like Alice in Chains, Jane’s Addiction, and Killswitch Engage.

Burnout: Paradise’s visuals can also best described as nostalgic. The entire game is bathed in a 2011 Instagram filter which produces a slightly nauseous blend of light green roads and yellow skies, and the game’s egregiously frequent Gillette razor advertising feels straight out of the Manscaped guidebook of aggressive marketing. Yet, the game’s sense of speed, boosted by high-quality lightening, smoke and particle effects create a real feeling if tangibility in your car – especially once you witness it fold up like a deck chair following a crash. Burnout Paradise’s cars and motorbikes are phenomenally detailed and there’s a really satisfying progression from starting with an old beater, exhausting plate scraping across the ground, to finishing the game in a hypercharged and crisp Lambourghini.

Burnout: Paradise is well-worth the ride and it boggles me why the series currently remains dormant. Where do I sign the petition for a Burnout 3: Takedown remaster?

funny that this works better than the remaster