Burnout Paradise

I remember slowmotion destruction and G'n'R Paradise City playing on repeat, and little else

Very fun for the first few hours. But they keep resetting your progress (as a punishment for doing well) and making you win the same races again and again, but with more cars on the road. It gradually transitions from fun to extremely annoying. It could have been one of the great games of all times if it was more sensible with its goals. As it is, you either spend a billion hours getting 100%, or play till it's not fun anymore and leave with a bad taste in your mouth.

/completed

i remember not liking the open world much and feeling like they went too hard on the racing rather than the fun destruction shit. so i barely played it. yet i still consider getting the ps4 remaster lool

Who was the genious who thought it would be a cool idea to just set "Paradise City" song as the ONLY song to play while in the main menu?! (I obviously dont hate this game only for this reason tho)

This is still the best arcade racer over a decade later. Some aspects haven't translated to modern systems but the core mechanics and the thought put into the many systems and the overworld make this game an absolute master class of driving games.

Nobody could do arcade racing like Criterion. The takedown mode is still intact and fun as always, but the new sandbox made the game hard to put down until you'd discovered every nook and cranny of the world, bashed in every yellow gate and billboard, found all of the jumps and secrets. Really great.

Best racing SIM ever. Crashing has never looked so spectacular.

Open world racing at it's finest. Multiplayer had challenges that made free roaming with friends very enjoyable. Biggest downside is no standard crash mode.

Great racer.