Joystiq impressions: Burnout Paradise

"Paradise" because this is the Burnout that Criterion has always wanted to develop, an EA marketing associate told us. Rebuilt on a yet-named engine (though internally, it's being called something like "smoldering BM"), Burnout Paradise drops us into a virtual city and promptly lets go. 'Burnout without boundaries' can be intimidating to the unimaginative, but it's simple enough to stop at any of the 150 traffic lights, spin your car wheels, and initiate a classic-style race (though even these races are open to interpretation, since checkpoints can be reached from numerous routes). Time trial and crash mode are also cleanly embedded into the open-world, seamlessly attached to each street in the game.

Still, this looks and plays a lot like Burnout Takedown and its subsequent sequels, and it's not until your friends (up to 8) start to pile up in your city that Criterion's vision of Paradise starts to become clear. Suddenly, spontaneous barrel rolls don't seem so, well, pointless. Now it's a high score competition, or a lure into a friendly takedown. But watch out, if you're victim's using a web cam, the game will automatically snap a mug shot just as your buddy becomes a crumpled wreck and plaster it on your screen -- and there's no telling where said victim's camera might be pointed...

Criterion has made sacrifices, giving up real-time lighting and weather effects to ensure 60fps, and has scrapped the neatly packaged standard of menus and sub-menus that tend to guide the gameplay of most racing titles. Perhaps Paradise is a place where the sun is always perched just past noon; where there are no traffic laws; where horrific crashes don't have haunting consequences -- instead they're pleasures. But Paradise was never meant to be a loner's retreat. It's multiplayer, and multiplayer alone, that will save this franchise from monotony.

Note: PlayStation 3 box art is used above to reflect that Criterion and EA are currently previewing Burnout Paradise on PS3 only.

Update: EA has set a tentative "winter" release -- expect Burnout Paradise in early 2008.