Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box

Remember those toy cars you used to have as a kid that were designed to explode in a shower of tiny plastic bits, each more than capable of choking a whole classroom of slow learners? The ones that could break then be put back together again so you could make them hurtle into walls all over again? Well, Criterion certainly does and they've provided a hell of a lot of walls too. Making its first appearance on the PC, the Burnout franchise has had its market perfectly and satisfactorily taken care of by the vaguely copycat - but equally crash-tastic - FlatOut series. Where this inaugural PC outing differs though, is the setting. This time, you're dropped into a freeform city where you can drive about at will, stopping at intersections to pick and choose different events. Instead of being entirely course-based, events begin at the chosen crossroads and finish at one of six pre-defined locations around the map. Burnout Paradise is all about the rewards system. Win a race and you get points on your license - the reverse of real life. Hit the right amount of wins and you can upgrade your license and gain access to bigger, beefier and faster cars. There are also new cars to pickup by ramming them off the road making them available at your own personal junk yards. If you don't want to necessarily take part in the events, you can amuse yourself by hooning around the streets searching out jumps, short-cuts or just driving as fast as you can into a wall to see the impressive deformation physics in action. And that's about it. Which is the problem with Burnout Paradise: it's a bit of a waste of time. But, curiously, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's a diversion; a game to pick up and play for a half-hour, smash a few cars, win a few easy races and put down again. It's compulsive up to a point, then becomes repetitive, but then you'll get the itch to jump into the driverless driver's seat and start creating junk again. The Ultimate Box bits add a few extras to the multiplayer angle; giving you a few more events to add to your party games. There's also the addition two-wheeled transport too, but there's precious few variations on that front, and less events. The crashes, the meat of the game, are definitely lacking without extra wheels and surface area. Burnout Paradise is well worth a bash. It's fairly silly, never punishes you for any spectacular crashing, but - somewhat unsurprisingly - it still freewheels on the side of superficial. For all your Discount Computer Parts, Games and Notebook requirements visit us at http://usacomputers.rr.nu and http://sacomputers.rr.nu

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