Burnout Paradise - Xbox 360

If you think that driving fast cars at high speeds along traffic-filled streets and roads sounds like a recipe for a very large crash, you wouldn't be a million miles from the truth. In the Burnout series of games, those are your tasks; both driving fast and causing crashes. This anarchic blend of racing and destruction has been elevated to new heights with Burnout Paradise, the fifth release in the series for home consoles.

Gone are the strictly regimented tracks and courses of previous games, replaced with a fully open city and environs that can be explored at will. The name of the city in Burnout Paradise is, as may be expected, Paradise City. With the strains of the Guns and Roses song (which kicks off another jam-packed Burnout soundtrack) playing in your ears you are dropped into your first car and let loose on the unsuspecting, but amazingly tolerant population. From there, the city is your oyster. You can burn around, getting into scrapes, finding jumps and shortcuts or smashing through billboards all day should you wish.

When you are ready to race, you just have to pull up at any one of 120 sets of traffic lights and spin your wheels. You will then be entered into an event, Burning Routes replace Burning Laps from older games but the old favourite Road Rage is still there. New event types Stunt Run and Marked Man involve chaining insane stunts together and surviving an all-out assault by the other competitors. All of these events can be played on-line with either your friends or randomly matched strangers. You can also Freeburn around Paradise while online, setting and challenging stunt records like 'longest drive into oncoming traffic' or 'most near misses chained together'.

Burnout Paradise offers an entire city to race around and an almost unlimited number of accidents to get involved in. Welcome to Paradise. more