One year after its release on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the flagship of the English title of Criterion comes to PC through a special version called The Ultimate Box. Ultimate, as this version is accompanied by all additional content developed by the developers of the game throughout his career on console. PC enthusiasts racing very "arcade" will be delighted to see that Criterion finally looks to their machine and the addition of these "bonus" is obviously not a bad thing ... Provided of course that the developers have cracked an adaptation of quality.
Take me down to the Paradise City...
Theater of our future exploits, Paradise City is a city created by Criterion Games with great story Guns'n'roses to put the player into the atmosphere "destructive" of the title. Burnout Paradise is a racing game open as there are others, but unlike some titles such as Need For Speed from Electronic Arts, there was no particular goal. The developers have designed any scenario and in the skin of a "simple" fan speed, the player must wander through the city, deal with other drivers through various tests and win a maximum of victories.
The only real "goal" is to link the success to unlock the next license level. It actually starts the game with a permanent "new" and as victories, moving up levels drop Burnout Elite license and even Burnout Elite Gold reward the best players. These levels provide access to ever more powerful cars to reach an impressive total of 75 racing machines, all fictional, but more or less based on real models. Fairly schematic, it is possible to distinguish three categories: aggression, cascade speed.
Given their name, you can easily identify the tests in which these types of cars are likely to excel. Indeed, as we said, many events are offered to the player who must pass a number to move forward. These tests range from simple course through the city against a maximum of seven drivers, challenges that require stunts to score a certain number of points by chaining jumps, figures or slippage. There are also races where survival must resist the attacks of opponents, takedown challenges that lead us instead to eliminate these enemies and various other competitions.
The whole is the basis varied and can play well by multiplying the races during the early hours of Thursday Next, things go a bit because of some minor problems which, placed end to end, can cause fatigue. First, despite the size of the city and the variety of environments, the tests will eventually all look a bit. It must be said that to quickly connect point A to point B, there is not a million different ways. So often we take the same routes, the same highways and shortcuts and the same is true that competition is fierce.
Another point that tends to make things a bit painful sometimes the lack of GPS. In a truly open Thursday when the city, vibrant, has a role to play, this poses no problem, but here the main interest in walking is to recognize the field before a race: we have seen better. Suddenly, the lack of GPS is mostly the best way to lose unnecessary or swallow bitumen to reach our next race. Not quite related to the absence of GPS, the navigation problem during races still joined this fault we are being mentioned.
"Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty"
Thus, despite the presence of lights on equipment and signs at the top of the screen, often it loses its way during a particularly tight race. t is also difficult to concentrate on the road / traffic / opponents and at the same time, watch the signs or the mini-map (not very readable in passing) in the bottom right of the screen. Each time we ventured to look for "tracking", it fails to take an obstacle, striking an opponent or miss a shortcut. If some people find that it adds excitement, others will be quite excited.
Everything is a matter of perspective, but this may be part of things that crispent, as this goddamn DJ Diabolika which serves as a voice to all the game's details in the descriptions of events are interesting, but its comments to bring some life to our seeing in the city are frustrating: repetitive and never funny, they are useless. Not exaggerate the problem, because these faults are few, except for the driving style of course, the main one game that provides the core: to give maximum enjoyment to the player.
Burnout Paradise is a game resolutely turned towards the arcade, and in that sense, we should not expect a very realistic behavior of vehicles: one pushes mechanics at full power and no brake is used only on rare occasions or to some figures. This is not a new direction for the Burnout series, but it is better to be warned before, there is no question of playing a remake "open city" of GTR! However, the pace of racing is exciting, the very impressive waterfalls and many crashes are almost shudder as the player they are rendered.
Old style games regret probably a level of difficulty can be a bit weak due in particular to an artificial intelligence behind. The shelf life is still insured by the number of tests available and to the sides as sometimes amusing search for ski jump, signs of massacre and other small surprises that fill the discovery of Paradise City (workshop paint, broken boost management ...). A discovery made more valuable by the technical unwavering Criterion. While optimizing the game is concerned, the English we offer a small pearl.
The spirits chagrins retain the restriction to 60 frames per second, we prefer to emphasize the fluidity copy. History to give you an idea, remember that a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz supported by 2 GB of memory and a GeForce 9800 running the game at maximum detail in 1 680 x 1 050. Do not spoil and outside comments Diabolika DJ, the soundtrack is not bad at all with music and occasional sound cool. Finally, the multiplayer comes as the icing of a cake appetizing. The city serves as a meeting place between the players who may join race between a maximum of eight of these challenges and cooperative ... Only regret: no split-screen mode.
Conclusion
Already available since a year on consoles, Burnout Paradise takes its time to land on PC, but given the general optimization of the title, we can not complain especially since it is not the basic version, but the Ultimate Box. Criterion has effectively integrated the various modules released during the past twelve months on consoles in order to propose a more comprehensive (motorcycles, day / night cycle, Fashion Party to eight on the same machine ...). For this first opus on PC, Criterion has not mocked the world, but the console versions of defects are still there. These include the relative frequency of tests, and later a little rough spotting in the city. he interface is not a model of its kind, but the dynamism of the races, nervousness challenges "Survival" and the spectacular stunts / crashes should be enough to satisfy fans hungry for arcade thrills.
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