Is Your Burnout Hardcore?

Published February 5, 2008

There are games that come out of the box ready to challenge the heart of your hardcore status. Call of Duty® 4: Modern Warfare™ on Veteran, and Halo® 3 single-player on Legendary are both shining examples. Simply blasting your way to the end credits is worthy of acclaim, but with Burnout™ Paradise we must roll up our sleeves and tap our creative side for a good and proper hardcore challenge.

Stick to the left side and brave that oncoming traffic!

After thirty-plus hours of gameplay, yours truly has arrived at a series of simple but brutally effective rules and challenges to test every fiber of your Burnout gaming skill. Defeat Burnout Paradise under the following conditions and you may keep your hardcore status for another day.

Can you resist the temptation? Will you
prove your hardcore credentials?

Opposites Attract

Those eager for that extra bit of challenge can instill a higher degree of difficulty in all that they do in Burnout Paradise by choosing the vehicle class directly opposed to the task at hand. That means tackling races with the unwieldy, not-so-swift Aggressor vehicles, doing battle in Marked Man and Road Rage events with flimsy Stunt cars, and desperately trying gravity-defying stunts with Speed cars that only boost with a full meter.

Critical Road Rage

Burnout is at its most gratifying when you know that a single misstep will spell your certain defeat. While this is most often seen on the final boost to the finish line in online races, replicate this white-knuckle intensity by beginning Road Rage and Marked Man events with your damage level already at critical.

Doesn't look like critical damage to me.

This may mean smashing your car a time or two when the event starts, but since these challenges don't represent tremendous time constraints, you can wreck at your own leisure before starting the event in earnest. If you can snatch victory from the psycho-driving Marked Man pursuers or score enough Takedowns in Road Rage to earn a win with nary a wreck, your Burnout skills are shaping up nicely.

Always Oncoming

Every race in Burnout Paradise offers oncoming traffic throughout the bulk of its route, provided you go looking for it. And look for it you shall, for the hardcore gamer sinks their teeth into the most dangerous task with gusto, and well, it doesn't get much more dangerous than squeezing between oncoming traffic at two hundred miles per hour. Steel your nerves my friends, and embrace the left lane.

Shortcut Allowance

Shaving precious seconds off your time with well considered shortcuts is one of the chief pleasures of the game, so I can't in good conscience suggest you forego them altogether for the sake of boosted difficulty. I'd say, just use them at the race's beginning, and forsake their charms once you've established your lead.

Burnout the Road

If the rumors are to be believed, there are Burnout players out there scoring the Boosting Around the World achievement by drifting in circles while constantly boosting. What skill can one possibly claim with such egregious trickeration?

That's the idea, get that x20 Boost Chain on streets.

No, no, the hardcore gamer must embrace the spirit in which the achievement was conceived, and that means constant boosting through oncoming traffic, dense intersections and suicidal corners. Yes, the hardcore must net this achievement on the streets of Paradise City.

A Class Below

Good tactics, quality route selection and preternatural reflexes will nearly always win out against statistically superior vehicles, so when you're racing online, let your skill and not the size of your Junkyard determine victory. Always select a car at least one class below the set limit. Win with the inferior car and you'll earn bragging rights the right way.

Criterion Elite

The hardcore gamer is a completist by nature. Who can rest knowing that there are still billboards to crash through, gates to smash, and races to win? In some games, we must take 100% completion as a reward in and of itself, but thanks to developer Criterion and their Criterion Elite achievement, the challenge has been placed formally before us.

You must earn your Burnout Elite license, complete every last event, find every car park, drive-thru, billboard and gate, and lay claim to every Road Rule. Criterion has thrown down the gauntlet, my friends. I rely on you to accept the challenge.

Burnout Paradise represents a rare challenge for the hardcore gamer. It teases you with the easier path, testing you at every turn to see if you'll opt appropriately for the more difficult road. Can you resist the temptation? Will you prove your hardcore credentials? I can only hope so.

Article by Hardcore