Anyone heard anymore about if one version is ANY better than the other ???

if you dont mind me asking how did you play online??? I'll play with you if we can get into a game together.

i was playing with 2 of my friends....we did about 30 challenges and then took each other out and made funny pics. Its a pretty fun game but as usual, the racing sucks but road rages make up for it.

Most of the reviews i've been seeing have been very positive for the game, so the mediocre demo isn't bothering too much. Either way, I think i'd probably wait for this to drop in price before looking at it. I really dig Takedown and Revenge though.

ordered this game for 52.97 shipped no tax for me @ familyvideo.com
using 5 off 50 coupon code: save5now

According to the 1UP review it is a trade off. The PS3 version has an ever so slight graphical edge. So slight you probably need them side by side to tell. I think the 360 has more screen tearing and the textures may be slightly better on the PS3. However, the 360 version has custom soundtracks so that may be the big winner for a racing game. Who knows when Sony will get around to adding custom soundtracks to the PS3.

Spent a couple hours in Paradise City last night. Let me preface and say(again) I hated the demo. The demo seemed to take everything that was great about Burnout and toss it out the window. Now, the full game, pretty much the same.

Is it fun? Yes. Is it Burnout? No. Is it frustrating? Yes.

Negatives:

• Having to look at a compass at the top of the screen, the map in the bottom corner of the screen and keep track of your car at 175mph+ is annoying as hell. Keeping track of all that basically negates going top speed and/or driving on the wrong side of the road. If you look away to the map/compass you're going to wreck.
  
• Color palette. :wtf: Looks like Gears of War with cars. It's supposed to be a sunny city and it's named Paradise City for fucks sake. Why don't colors pop? Grayscale is the palette which makes things very drab. From the cityscape down to your paint job, everything is so muted.
  
• selecting events. Not a fan at all. Not only would 'retry' option be nice, but basically a way to play similar events in succession. I was having a blast with Road Rage and want to keep playing RR, so I pull up to the next light for an event, nope this is a race, drive on to the next light, oh great a Burning Lap, maybe it's around the corner, nope another race that I can't race with my current car. Very annoying. Give me the option to hop around the map to areas I've already driven if a menu structure is out of the question. Test Drive: Unlimited did a great job of this. This is especially annoying when you are up in the hills which has very few stop lights/events. You get off track and have to drive all the way back.
  
• the map is tiny compared to Test Drive. To drive around the island in TD would take more than an hour. I've already done multiple races in Burnout that span the city and you can navigate to the other side of the map in a mater of minutes. It's different in the windy hills but for the most part it seems rather small. It is dense though with lots of back roads and cut-throughs.
  
• Showtime mode is a very weak imposter for Crash mode. I only did it once and racked up a half million points and was already over it. I'll probably only mess with it for achievements

Positives:

• Criterion nailed open world driving. It is more fun dicking around the city looking for billboards than doing actual racing. That's bad when your franchise is built on racing. If you dug searching for Orbs in Crackdown you will dig searching for gates and billboards in Paradise. You see them hovering above your head and you have to search for a proper ramp to hit them. A couple of times I found myself wanting to get out of my car to explore. Again, bad for a racing franchise.
  
• I'm actually digging the gas stations, repair shop, paint shop and junk yard design. Makes it interesting making the most of a game mode while you are doing it. Imagine your car about ready to blow during a Road Rage, just hit a repair shop to last a little longer. Same with racing and getting full boost from hitting a gas station.
  
• Unlocking cars - something that sounded bad on paper is actually pretty fun. When you unlock one, it opens the car up on the island. You have to find it and take it down before you can add it to your garage. I've found about 6 but everytime they drive past you at some point letting you know they are there. So they aren't just roaming on the opposite side of the map to where you will never find them.
  
• Traffic checking being removed. It was fun in Revenge, but going without is definitely more challenging and fun.

In the end, take the driving of GTA and throw in the Orbs of Crackdown(without the ability to leave the car) and you have Paradise. This is all fun, but it's not Burnout, it's GTA with Orbs.

So you're saying the controls suck, theres no sense of speed, you can nail pedestrians and get cops chasing you, and the graphics are shoddy?


And I noticed that about the color in the demo, is there a Vivid option like there is in Gears/UT3?

I fiddled with this for about 2 hours last night and I think that Michael Corvin pretty much nailed it. I'm really, really disappointed that we couldn't just get a damn Burnout game. I have no other racing games to look forward to.

I cannot STAND the repair shops and gas stations. It just feels like an artificial way of adding another dimension, and all it ends up being is frustrating. Because of what Michael Corvin accurately said about the lunacy of using a map in Burnout, you're crashing all the damn time. Unless you happen to magically bump into one of those repair places, you need to literally stop what you're doing until you find one. I hate it.

The controls still feel like classic Burnout to me, that's the only positive for me. I hate that you can't traffic check, because again, you need to be looking at the f'n map ALL THE TIME. Because you can't traffic check, the cars just add another crashable element for me to run into. It's absurd. The addition of the map is the single worst possible thing they could have done to this series. The racing is so much fun that you don't need any shitty gimmicks, especially when you cannot take your eyes off the road for a split second. When I got separated from the pack in a race, I'm dead.

Ugh. I actually wish I hadn't picked this up. Maybe I'll get used to it, but I doubt it.

I DID NOT LIKE THIS GAME! I'm extremely disappointed. I played about an hour of it last night and could not get into it. I loved all the previous Burnouts, but I don't think this game can call itself Burnout with all the changes they made.

I totally agree with Micheal Corvin about the racing. It is awful to have to look on the map and the compass to know where you are going. It's sooo open ended that it took the fun out of racing. The previous Burnouts were great because you knew where you were going and could restart (it was a great pick up and play anytime w/ friends game). Now I have to actually take time to watch the road, cars, map, compass, direction signal while trying to win a race that I have no idea where it's going. Frustrating to the max!

One of the things that made the last game so great was Crash Mode. The new Crash Mode is annoying because you have to drive around looking for jumps. Am I supposed to memorize where jumps are on the map? I barely know where I am half the time, even with the map. And there's no way I'm going to memorize this damn map! It's huge and you're going at blazing speeds. If this is what was expected, then I want my money back. Some people don't have the time to drive around and explore a huge GTA size map.

For the sake of the Burnout name, I will give this a few more plays (and maybe go online). But I seriously feel that I'll either end up returning this or replaying Burnout Revenge. One of the reasons the series was so appealing was because of how easy it was to just pick up and play (Crash Mode/Road Rage/Racing), and now that has been taken out completely. I have to go on lengthy city searches now just to find an event that would be fun as opposed to frustrating.

That's saddening to hear. I hated the color palette in the demo, because not only was it Gears of Warsy, but it made the driving harder because everything kind of blended together in that dusky brown. Does the weather ever change to clear blue skies?

Shit, I didn't even think about that. I would always tackle past Burnout games like that. I would do Burning Laps together, crashes together, etc.

I'll probably still pick up my copy this week, but I'm almost contemplating a price drop wait.

Oh well, sucks to hear all this negativity about the game, was tempted to pick it up...

I was really hoping for a rebound after the disappointingly lackluster Burnout 4 (traffic checking all but completely ruined races, and the crash mode was incredibly lame compared to 3 and especially 2.) but it doesn't sound like it has :(

I've been playing for a week now and almost completed most of the game. It's a great game, lots of fun by yourself or with friends. However, it really needs a "Retry" and "Warp to next event" feature. Other than that, its nearly perfect.

Nope. As far as I can tell the time of day never changes. It appears to be permanent dusk which adds to the dull grayscale feel. Which means no night driving. Another loss.

I haven't tried multiplayer. Maybe tomorrow night with some of you guys.

I rented it and pretty much agree all around.

The most disheartening thing is that there's definitely a great game amidst all the bad decisions Criterion made. The things they could've implemented to improve the game (color-palette, re-try, closed-off tracks, event selection, etc.) would've been very easy to do, and all that would've done is given the player more freedom as to how to approach the game.

It's too bad, because the actual courses and especially the controls are spot-on, so there's nothing technically wrong with the game at all. It's just loaded with bad design decisions that keep it from being the amazing racer it could've been.

I don't get it...

From all our discussions here about the demo and now the game, people just don't seem to like it.

Yet in every review I read they point out the same things we're pointing out but still giving the game incredibly high marks.

Some people can look past issues and still find an incredibly entertaining product, others harp on things.

I guess if it was called something else, and didn't have the Burnout baggage, there wouldn't be any problems. But with the name "Burnout" comes certain expectations, few of which are met in this new game. Reviewers have to be more objective than us, so the baggage of the title doesn't weigh on them as much.

That's the problem with reviews. Some people can overcome the flaws and still enjoy it. Others give it a pass on the flaws just because the developers tried something new. Plus I think certain games get a pass because of their name. Games like Zelda, Metroid and Halo probably gain an extra point just because of the title on the box. I think Burnout is in this group. Like I said, it is a fun game, it just isn't Burnout. It feels more like a spin-off franchise. Bearing the name Burnout comes with certain expectations, just like Halo or Mario. It isn't just another racer on the shelf. There are elements that define the franchise.

Very well said. I agree completely. It's not about harping on things, those are honestly bad design decisions. Some things are nitpicking like Showtime over Crash, or the Gas stations, but the few things slop posted could have easily been fixed and made for the ultimate Burnout. Having to pause in the middle of a race multiple times just so you know where to go? Fail. What about the passage of time? The more I think about it, that is another inexcusable omittance. The developers want you to experience this "real" open world but the sun doesn't set?

As it stands, it is a flawed game and given some refinement would make for an outstanding Paradise 2.

Well, looks like I'm sticking with Takedown and Revenge...

Thanks for the input. I'll be passing on this one. I am surprised by the high review scores here. It sounds inferior in every way to TDU, which I loved but got only middling scores from the reviewers.

I like it and I own ALL of the other Burnouts, even the two for the PSP. Granted, yes, it's not "Burnout" in the traditional sense, but because I don't play any other racing games and I liked the demo, I played for three hours yesterday, won four cars and 6 events, and I love it.

If you are a hardcore gamer who likes to achieve 100% completion in most games, I can see you liking this game. However, if you are a casual "pick up and play when you have time" kinda gamer - then you may be disappointed.

I was never big on racing games. Burnout was the only racing series I really enjoyed because of it's ease of use and arcade action. With all the changes made to Burnout Paradise, I feel that there are no racing games out there for me anymore. :(

Ugh, guess I'm going to stick with Revenge too. The demo was interesting, and I was hoping the final game would bring it all together into a cohesive package.

But it sounds like they got a little too focused on doing something different and forgot to include all of the stuff that makes the franchise so popular.

Hmm, I had such a blast playing the demo that I picked it up last night, but I didn't get a chance to play it. I guess that means I'm REALLY going to enjoy the full game. :)