Zero Punctuation: Burnout: Paradise

This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee takes Burnout: Paradise for a spin.

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A nice review indeed, now don't ban me because I posted this...

Car games don't really interest me a little bit so I just stay away from them.

EDIT: Didn't you guys noticed that a car was sounding in the background when Yahtzee was talking of the camera angles when you crash?

Six steps closer to Albuquerque, I salute you.

I also wondered about the fact that the only life-form you ever actually see any sign of is Atomica. I hated that there was NO ONE in your car if you broke out the windshield to look inside of it. Though, you know you could have adjusted the view if you didn't like the default, which I saw you noted at the end. I found the default camera much better so you can judge if you will be able to squeeze past somewhere or if you can turn sharper or something. Also, I really enjoyed it just because of how smoothly it ran at those insane speeds. I am really not a fan of most racing games, but it felt enough like Midnight Club 3 that I bought it. Also, you better have it on 360 so you can listen to your own in-game music, because the game's soundtrack is pretty bad. Avril Lavigne? Hell no!

The UK now hates you, I think.

Good review... as always... I think it's nice they brought DJ Atomica back, he was kinda fun in SSX 3.

Wow he seems a bit agitated this week. He is probably still feeling the feedback from DMC4 I guess

nice review... but car games are like sports games... and i dislike both

Ambition:
The UK now hates you, I think.

Hmmm this part of the UK is in favour, I'd have preferred just crashing spectacularly in a boring set-up way.

Car games are ok but Grand Trismo will always be my no.1 car game oh yea Great Review

Racing games are all the same to me and like MMORPGs i play one once a few years. I haven't gotten my driver's license yet either, we are less sheep than the rest i would say. I would love to see how you would rated a true AAA game like GTA3 or what you would consider one

Two things I absolutely expected to be mentioned :

1) That the new crash mode sucks harder than Linda Lovelace and they should have kept the old one.

2) That far from being merely like GTA, it's nearly identical to Test Drive Unlimited.

Yahtzee you tifter wearing stud. What happened to the apt game comparisons? GTA. Pah.

Still the most accurate reviews on the net though.
VB (who's from the UK and doesn't hate Yahtzee at all)

Another masterpiece!

And Baileys makes me to yuck!

As a sidenote, the only track i saw that came from a guitar hero game was My Curse by Killswitch Engage.

Lol... Great review you Huculiran-examplar!
I noticed the mini-map problem in the demo. I also got pissed off alot when i crashed in 1st place and get last.

BTW when are you going to continue your Trilby and Chris comics??? They never ended

I take my "what is there to review in a racing game" back, this review is up there with the best ones.

P.S. Yahtzee, you calypgian superman, you've finally updated your site with new content?!

So what do you look for in games, apart from learning something? evidently you like half life, which i can only assume if for the story telling and art...and i can only hope its not for the repetitive and thoughtless gameplay design or the mind boggingly challenging see-saw puzzles. I had a quick go on your art of theft game and thought the idea had potential; basicaly stealth puzzles but quit after the first level because i found it boring, and poorly implemented, no doubt i stand alone on that. your dismissal of halo along with your love of silent hill lead me to beleive you do not enjoy intelligent gameplay, halo being one of the few games with solid and balanced gameplay, allowing for almost infinate replayability, and no it doesnt have a good story; neither does chess.

Best review for Paradise I've seen :) So true, I mean, it's fun for a bit - but the small things do end up getting in the way - dead on, Yahtzee.

Abolished:
Car games are ok but Grand Trismo will always be my no.1 car game oh yea Great Review

Amen My brother. I love racing games, and Gran Turismo is my crack cocaine. I am suffering withdrawals even now because after four years, my PS2 finally shit the bed. Ironically, I don't care for street racing games as much because they do lack a little in the reality department. Good stuff, but still usually leave me feeling like I sullied myself by playing them. Need for speed is probably the worst in the physics department. I once watched a guy take a 90 degree corner at 150 Miles Per Hour, then complain that the guy doing an oil change on my car staying under my car on Gran Turismo was unrealistic. The second most accurate physics in a game, and the guy not popping the hood is his complaint. Shows what he knows about cars. I am surprised he didn't say something about the guy crawling under the back of my Lotus Esprit to change the oil...

Ambition:
The UK now hates you, I think.

well that is a very general view. We are a diverse people and all free to our own opinion im sures some people don't like him but im sure sume do.
Anyway good review you hit all the right notes with the bad points and the good points (none).

HA! Breaks Flow! Dammit Yahtzee, I was taking a drink when you said that and I sqirted it all over my monitor.

I count 3 songs that have been in both a Burnout and Guitar Hero game:

Stop - Jane's Addiction
I Wanna Rock - Twisted Sister
Helicopter - Bloc Party

What do I win?

YAY, Carmageddon!

Double-YAY, someone else who thinks Burnout Paradise Sucks!

Triple- YAY, hatred towards street racing punk fucktards.

YESS!!!! Excellent review, Yahtzee! You pretty much summarized the entire series in one game! Keep up the perfect work and keep letting the hatred flow!

And a sideways-baseball-cap-wearing transcript:

People often ask me, "Yahtzee, you Herculean exemplar, you have so much to say about what makes a bad game, but what is your measure of a good game?" Well, actually, no one's ever asked me that; mostly they ask retarded questions like, "When am I going to review 20-year-old Nintendo games," like everyone and their dog, but it's the kind of question I'd like to be asked, so I'm going to answer it. One of my measures of a good game is one that teaches me something. Burnout: Paradise, for example, teaches me that if Princess Diana honestly couldn't survive a trivial little crash like that, then the girl must have been made out of wafers.

If there's one thing that makes me squirt liquid hate from every bodily orifice, it's street racers. Bunch of smirking, sideways-baseball-cap-wearing fuckscoffs, bobbing their heads in time with their hydraulics, and extending random fingers like they're about to intrude upon somebody's pubic region. As a street racing game, Burnout: Paradise earns points right from the start for not featuring any of those gropecunts or, indeed, any human beings at all. The game takes place in a strange post-apocalyptic future, where advanced sat-nav systems have resulted in a race of murderous sentient cars, and the only surviving human being is an insane DJ calling himself Atomica, who spends his nights running around setting up ramps everywhere, and his days holed up in a radio station trying to talk the cars into destroying themselves, so that he might one day reclaim society. That's the only explanation I can think of for the total absence of pedestrians, and why you never see any poorly-strapped-in children go hurtling through windscreens during one of the many, many, many high-speed crashes.

Burnout is a game that hates players with a passion. If it were a fascist dictator, it would build concentration camps for players, and what's more, he'd lay every brick personally with cement mixed from his own blood. That's how much he hates you. Every aspect of the gameplay is geared to ensure that you crash as often and as viscerally as possible. The streets twist and turn unexpectedly, the main camera angle has the back end of your car taking up most of your view like a mongoloid hippo, and the streets are densely populated with pupils of the local driving school for elderly sufferers of Alzheimer's disease. And when you do inevitably crash, Burnout's gloating satisfaction hangs thick in the air; slow-motion sets in, the color washes out, and the action switches to the optimal camera angle to watch yourself pirouette through the air, as if to say, "Hey, everyone, come and see Captain Crashesalot!" I do admit, however, that flying 500 yards upside down, while raining metallic-painted scrap metal is, to coin a phrase, Totally Fucking Sweet, at least when you're not in a hurry to get somewhere. Unfortunately, this being a racing game, you generally are in a hurry to get somewhere, and there's nothing that causes more autocannibalistic frustration than colliding with a bollard at full speed ten yards from the finish line, and having to watch yourself spinning on your roof for a few seconds while your opponents snatch first, second, and third place from under your mangled nose.

Burnout: Paradise's unique selling point is that it's an open world game, one of those games usually pitched with a sentence beginning, "Like Grand Theft Auto, but..." In this case, "Like Grand Theft Auto, but a hell of a lot more broken." The idea is that you can drive freely about the city as much as you like, and when you start a race, all you're given is a finishing point, allowing you to choose your own route. Fine in theory, but theories are treacherous things that can at any moment disintegrate like a biscuit raft. And the major flaw with this one is that you have to keep looking at your mini-map to make sure you're on the right course. My driving instructor used to give me enough stick for taking my eyes off the road at 30 miles an hour, and here's you hurtling through the streets at Mach 10, with any number of crash hazards closing in on your distracted arse.

My point is that the reason why racing games traditionally feature closed-circuit tracks is that the fun in a street racing game comes from driving really fast and breaking things. That's a winning formula, then you throw map-reading skills into it, and it's the metaphorical shot of Bailey's, overpowering all the other flavours. I keep having to pause the game in the middle of high-speed chases to bring up the map, which, like a menstruating woman falling off a tall building, breaks flow. An open world racing game could work; Carmageddon did something like that, and it was pretty fun, in a late 90's kind of way. Maybe that's because there were lots of old ladies around to help relieve the frustrations, or perhaps because it didn't take control from you every shit-gargling time you ran into a wall, to let the physics programmer dance on your grave for 20 interruptive seconds.

There are more things I can get pissy about, like the lack of local multiplayer, or how the single-player gameplay basically involves grinding the same races about 100 shitting times, but you have to judge Paradise by different standards. This isn't a game intended to be played all weekend; this is a game that you play for maybe an hour or so, to psych yourself up for playing a killer rock guitar solo, or punching out an angry bear. Yes, this is a game for cool people who like fast cars, and don't have time to play games because of all the sex they have. And if all you can do is sit there gabbing off about the design and game flow, then you've probably missed the smirking, sideways-baseball-cap-wearing point.

Khell_Sennet:
YAY, Carmageddon!

Double-YAY, someone else who thinks Burnout Paradise Sucks!

Triple- YAY, hatred towards street racing punk fucktards.

Quadruple Yay, The Levellers

:-)

People race in Burnout? Other than to unlock stuff for the crash modes, I mean.

Hilarious throughout, but dont take offense if i say a lot of it seemed to reflect your lack of ability to play driving games. I never use the minimap. After 4+ hours gaming time you should have a decent grasp of the city layout.

Besides, for a guy who gives out about lack of innovation frequently, you seems to dislike burnout for being to much against the grain. Different strokes i suppose.

i love yahtzee so much...never miss any...and i just LOVE the fact that he used the devotchkas at the end of this one!!

myopiczeal:
This isn't a game intended to be played all weekend; this is a game that you play for maybe an hour or so, to psych yourself up for playing a killer rock guitar solo, or punching out an angry bear.

Yahtzee you capriciously clever card! You made me spit out my drink!

I watched the review even though I haven't played, nor am I particularly interested in racing games. But I have seen games geared toward the the wealthy's indulgences, and not being one, they haven't really held my attention. It's dissapointing that those things exist, but at least we have confirmed it's going on. Maybe I wouldn't have such a positive attitude had I been playing, the droll and numb makes for boring companions.

On a sidenote, "Heavenly Sword and Other Stuff" got pushed to page 3 which is currently inaccessible.

I only remember "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones from Guitar Hero and Burnout Takedown. That's because I turned off ALL of the new punk garbage on the Burnout radio station! Every race it was Ramones, start to finish.

great review as always Yahtzee, keep them coming