Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I’ve been wanting to play one of the open-world racing games ever since the first Test Drive Unlimited came out in 2006. But with so many other games to play it wasn’t a huge priority and so I kept putting it off until the game was so old that it wasn’t worth playing  any more. Arguably even playing Burnout Paradise in 2011 is still leaving it a little late, but I noticed it on sale last Christmas on Steam and remembered that I’d always wanted an open-world racing game. Some thoughts:

• It’s a game with 2008 graphics and graphics are kind of a big deal for racing games. My eyes adapted eventually but, yeah, this is a real climb down compared to the Codemasters stuff I’ve played. On the plus side, the open-world really is quite big and the draw distance is rather impressive, even if the game cheats a bit by fogging things up when you’re at very high speeds.
• The driving physics aren’t even remotely realistic. This is a purely arcade racer but I liked it a lot more than the on-rails driving of the old Need for Speed games.
• I originally intended to play this as a light diversion after spending so much time with Hearts of Iron 3 and expected to only sample a bit of it. I ended up finishing the game anyway. The gameplay mechanics are very well done and collecting cars ends up being very addictive. There are so many of them in the game that even at the end I had only unlocked about half of what was available.
• Out of all the event types, I really only liked the old-fashioned races. The stunt events rely too much on memorizing the map for good places with lots of jumps and the Mad Men events, where you only have to make it to the destination in one piece, seemed far too easy provided you chose a car sensibly. The Takedown events, in which you need to wreck a certain number of opponents, were okay but rather easy as well.
• What differentiates the Burnout series from other racing games are the boost abilities of each car type and being able to wreck other cars. Aggression-type cars actually refill your boost by knocking other cars out of the race. Also, wrecks can be pretty spectacular in this game, with different parts crumpling realistically based on the point of impact.
• The open-world part is that races are point-to-point only and the game doesn’t care what route you use to get there. Using shortcuts helps a lot but generally I found that just skillful driving and judicious use of boost is enough to win races. Even the timed events are pretty generous. You just need to avoid crashing or making mistakes.
• Surprisingly I really liked the DJ commentary and the music selection in this game. I hated EA’s painful attempts to be hip in the Need for Speed games but the commentary here is topical, useful and at times even funny. There must be a ton of recorded voice dialogue in the game because the DJ always had something new to say.
• The motorcycles that were sold as a DLC but included in my Ultimate Edition were advertised as a pretty big deal, but I didn’t care for them much. They have their own events but they still feel like something of an afterthought. Oddly, motorcycle events are based around the time of day and can be done only if you arrive at the starting point at the right time which seems like a pointless restriction.

Overall I still prefer the Codemasters games. While it’s cool to race in an open-world, the lack of variety of terrain becomes grating quickly and I prefer the challenge of well-designed and balanced tracks. Still, it’s hard to beat Burnout Paradise as a casual driving game not to be taken too seriously. It’s a great game to jump in for an hour or two of light fun.