Paradise City Meets Xbox LIVE

Published February 5, 2008

Burnout™ Paradise's slick city-based design for accessing races and events is inspired, but the seamless multiplayer integration is no less creative. Like its single-player counterpart, multiplayer events played on Xbox LIVE® are built right into the city, including the often multi-step task of setting up or joining a match.

Nothing quite so sweet as a Takedown on your buddy.

Get Together

Joining together with friends and even random competitors is all handled right from the streets of Paradise City. Click right on the D-pad while roaming the city to access the Paradise City LIVE menu. From there, invite folks on your Friends List to join you in-city, access other people's open Freeburn Online matches, or set up your own Player Match or Ranked races.

This is one game that has fused social gameplay with fierce competition.

Where Burnout Paradise really succeeds is in establishing a social, relaxed environment by using the very same open-world Paradise City in the single-player game, essentially as a massive multiplayer lobby. Sure, you can set up and load pre-set races at your leisure, but the time spent between races is just as fun. Take the time to explore the city with up to seven of your friends, scoring random Takedowns for kicks, and setting your own on-the-fly challenges as you find unique settings for self-made stunts.

The city is precisely as you left it in single-player. Every billboard you've smashed and gate you've crashed maintains their checkmarked status. Likewise, you can track down and check off billboards and gates you hadn't found in single-player before while tooling around with your buddies.

Just a little love tap to let them know you're there.

Activity Time

When you're ready to tackle a competitive or even cooperative event, all the options the host requires are accessible in-game from the D-pad.

• Race time: Point-to-point races online can include classic pre-set races built right into the game, or edited races where the host handpicks the start and finish lines, even adding checkpoints along the way should they desire. Of course, pre-set checkpoint races are available as well. The host can also limit the class of cars available, including selecting the same vehicle for everyone to ensure a balanced playing field.
• Challenge time: Beyond standard races, there is a mammoth list of 350 multiplayer challenges to complete, including fifty challenges for each set number of players. Whether you're playing with just one friend or you've got eight racers available, every group combination has a fifty-challenge list they can complete. The challenges themselves range from something as simple as locating a landmark to barrel rolling through a suspended fuselage in the abandoned airfield. The challenges are tremendously varied, and are an outstanding way to familiarize yourself with the city.
• Road rules: The road specific time trials and Showtime crash-mode records exist both online and offline. Enable them when playing with friends at any time, at the host's discretion, to see who's got the skills on any road in the city.

Go!

Ready for Your Closeup?

Burnout Paradise offers what may be the most unique use of the Xbox LIVE Vision Camera of any game on the market. Any time you score a Takedown on a fellow racer, the Vision Camera snaps a photo of both you and the unfortunate recipient of your aggressive driving skills. These snapshots in time can make for some hilarious reaction shots as they capture the glee of victory and frustration of defeat. The photos are even saved in your Lineup for later viewing.

Best Of

Any time you join up with friends in Burnout Paradise, the game begins tracking records for that particular play session. This includes the player with the longest drift, the most time spent in oncoming traffic, best barrel roll and flatspins, most airtime, and a few other categories that help track the players with the best, most varied set of skills, and offer fodder for a bit of friendly smack talk.

Burnout Paradise on Xbox LIVE captures the freewheeling freedom of the single-player mode and transfers it whole and intact to the multiplayer arena. Whether you're just cruising around exploring the world, angling for the perfect Takedown on your friend, or participating in the more formal races and challenges, this is one game that has fused social gameplay with fierce competition. How you play it is entirely up to you.

Article by Ryan Treit