The burnout franchise has long been the leading arcade racer. Yes I am intentionally omitting the Need For Speed series because lately it sucks.

Burnout has been a success due to the great control system, sense of speed as well as the ball busting damage system. Criterion haven't sat on their asses however and have decided to tweak the new title to keep die hard fans interested as well as hopefully attracting a new crowd to the Burnout world. Burnout Paradise actually boasts some of the biggest changes to the franchise with almost everything in the game being tweaked or altered to some level. I can't say everything has changed for the better, but at least Criterion are taking some risks. It seems Axl and Slash are due to make yet more money as no one could have missed the ad campaign on TV recently for the game .... "Take me down to the Paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty" yep, this is  pretty much the games theme song courtesy of the long disbanded Guns N' Roses.

The most noticeable change in Burnout Paradise is the massive open world with the entire city being open at the start of the game, letting you,  the gamer have free reign over everything you wish to do. That said, not all the events are available when you start so it will still take a considerable investment to unlock the 75 cars at your ultimate disposal.

The city design is awesome with a plethora of hidden areas to explore as well as a ton of places to race and there are literally hundreds of masked areas and underground roads to drive around. Jumps and ramps are scattered all over the world enabling you to leap small buildings and perform barrel rolls, so you can not only race but perform some really cool looking stunts.

There are downtown areas as well as countryside courses which vary the experience for the racer and there are numerous highways so you can nail your foot to the ground for some high speed shenanigans. The environment is vastly improved on past Burnout endeavours and even though the video above is perhaps not the best representation there were many times I was holding my breath just looking around the cityscape. My favourite section is downtown which opens up many ways to win a race and this is one of the games biggest strengths because now you can get from point A to B along which route you feel like taking. The freedom this gives means that on more than one occasion I ended up taking a wrong path and finding myself extremely off course, so checking your map will prove to be just as important as skilful high speed driving.

Thankfully the map is very well designed, so just like Grand Theft Auto there will be landmarks you will memorise over time, making traversing the course much easier. It is however a very complex map, so don't expect to know your way around the city in a few hours. Those of you hopeless with directions and already sweating, don't panic, there is a rough ingame compass indicator which guides you towards the finish line, however the whole point of Paradise is to create a much more free flowing gaming environment so you always have various optional paths to take. Sounds like I love it, right? Well not entirely.

With this realistic style system there is a huge downside in that there are no "restarts" during a race, so if you make a horse's ass of the current race, then you will end up driving all the way back to the start line. Realism officiandos would be drooling, if Paradise wasn't marketed as a quickly accessible arcade game, so this feature ends up as a half assed middle ground between being realistic and extremely annoying (I am erring more on the side of extremely annoying right now).

Races are not the sole event in Paradise City and gore mongers amongst you will be happy to hear that the Road Rage events have only had minor tweaks. A simple change of altering the target cars from three to five or six. Yeah, a small change, but one that doesn't ruin the event while increasing the chances for more carnage and twisted metal splattered across your screen. It really is almost as good as porn.

We now have "Showtime events" which replace the old crash mode and unlike the other events in the game this mode can be started at any time by pressing the two shoulder buttons on your PS3 or Xbox 360 controller. This initiates a weird car flip mode (imagine the car overdosing on M&M's and taking a fit) and you start crashing into everything in your vicinity. Sounds weird, and I guess it is, however it is a lot of fun and if you are skilled enough you can carry this crash fest out of the street you started in and around a substantial portion of the Paradise city scape. The major differences between this wacky Showtime mode and the old crash mode is that now, as long as you can keep the car moving you can keep ranking up the damage. This is achieved by using boost which is earned by hitting other cars and therefore increasing your score. Furthermore you can increase your multipliers by hitting busses on your travels. Sadly, just like real life, if you need a bus you wait for 4 hours then 20 all arrive at the one time.

All in all, while the Showtime mode is a lot of laughs on your own or with friends, most of it seems to boil down to luck and relying on vehicles to appear on screen rather than your dexterity or skill with the gamepad. Either way i'm screwed, however I still feel it is a shame they removed the Crash mode of old.

Showtime events are paired with timed runs for each street so if you drive to the end of any road in the game and start driving a counter will start to tick showing the time. It is just as simple and straightforward as it sounds and works reasonably well.

I mentioned earlier that there are many ramps and jumps scattered throughout the game which leads me nicely into the Stunt events, the concept of which is to earn the highest score possible within a specific amount of time. You earn points by boosting and powersliding around turns (a bit like kudos in Project Gotham Racing) but you earn multipliers for jumping off ramps, doing barrel rolls and smashing through gates and doors. Barrel rolls are particularly noteworthy as they earn you double the fun. I challenge anyone out there to NOT enjoy Stunt mode because while other parts of the game have flaws, this is just a killer event and it always leaves me with a smile on my face. As before, the choice of car is important and as they all  handle differently, this event can become extremely time consuming if you want to nail the highest score. Fifty hours in and I am still loving it, so it is not a bad thing !

Ah, the vehicles, around 80 or so and each falls into a certain category, those being speed, stunt or aggression based. Breaking them down is really easy, Aggression vehicles are always larger, slower and heavy and perfect for road rage and inflicting as much damage as possible, however they do suck for speed and fine control events. Stunt cars are the ones to use for drifting and jumping and many will be of familar design to the groups we have all experienced in prior Burnout games. Speed cars are built for boosting and chaining burnouts to rack up those huge scores, although they are fiddly as you can only boost on a full bar. They are particularly strong on the freeways and race events but almost impossible to use within Stunt races. The other two groups are fine for boosting combos as they don't rely on a full meter, so as you see, choosing the right car is just as important as having lightning reflexes if you want to score well in Paradise.

Of all the cars, you only start with one once you initially earn your license however all the others are earned after an event. Unlocking a car in this way means it will appear in Paradise City and then you have to find it and take the sucker down. Those of you who want these cars immediately will again find  this a frustrating experience as you have no idea where they are, so I found the best strategy was to drive around completing more events while hoping to run into them. The theory behind this is to keep the game fresh, so while you are heading to another event you might run across several cars you unlocked earlier. Dropping everything and taking the cars out is the chosen course of action once you find  them on your travels.

The driving mechanics are just as good as prior titles in the franchise and it would be mad for Criterion to suddenly change these as they already work so well. One of the biggest selling points of Burnout has always been the sense of speed, and you will not walk away from Paradise feeling conned as this game actually runs slightly faster than Burnout Revenge. Motion sick bags are optional. Playstation 3 owners will be pleased to hear that this game runs just as well as the 360, with only minor graphical changes being apparent between the consoles (the 360 has a slight edge on aliasing). I can't say I have taken multiple still grabs and overlayed them in Photoshop to analyse the rendering differences, but I can say, both console versions look absolutely fantastic. Those of you who loved Forza Motorsport 2 motion will be excited to hear that the frame rate in Paradise is 60fps which seems to helps the responsiveness of the control. Hats off to Criterion for managing to squeeze such high framerates when paired with the impressively detailed environments.

Online play is inspired as you control the multiplayer mechanics via the d pad, pressing right on the D pad opens up the online menu so you can invite your buddies into your game while configuring the options. It is all very well executed and works surprisingly well. After inviting friends into the game you can create a custom race by setting start and end points while dropping checkpoints into the map and it is great that Criterion allow you to save these rather than having to constantly rebuild them on demand. Freeburn challenges are exciting in that you can set up to 50 challenges for each number of players in the game. The configuration options for these are varied, you can set up simple or complex tasks such as barrel rolling through several hoops or having specific players cars crash in key areas of the map. It really is all good fun and adds to the overall value of Burnout Paradise.

The latest Burnout is simply a Paradise of gaming heaven, sure it has flaws however the racing pros far outweigh the cons. If you can deal with having to use the map system to navigate for a while then the added benefit of having a massive free flowing multi ended gaming environment reaps many rewards. Criterion have once again delivered a fresh gaming experience unrivalled amongst its peers and Electronic arts had better be taking some notes for their next Need For Speed title.

High adrenaline thrills, tons of twisted metal and frantic stunt racing ensue. Very highly recommended for both Ps3 and Xbox 360 owners, even those non racing fans.