Finished: Burnout Paradise

I'm not really sure if you can "finish" a game that has pretty much endless online play and a final single player chapter that's basically making you play the whole game over again, but regardless, I'm pretty much done with Burnout: Paradise unless friends want to play it online.

When I first demoed this game months ago, I couldn't get over the complete restructuring of the game in the series sense. Whenever a game goes into a free-roaming environment where you can do whatever you want but play the actual game, I'm always overly cautious. With Burnout, it was because I liked the instant action of choosing a street, trying to crash into cars to beat a score or picking a race to win. Cut and dry. Quick and dirty. But instead of keeping that formula and meshing it with an open world (a la Need for Speed: Underground 2's mission based gameplay), Burnout: Paradise just made "events" all over the place. It forced you to try events that you didn't necessarily want to try because you were lazy and didn't want to waste time driving around to one you did.

This was a pretty solid buy at $22. The graphics and physics were great. The licensed music was all really pretty good and matched the game's feel. The online system is beautifully integrated, minus one slight error not letting motorcycles play with cars. And all the free updates (including the bikes themselves) made it an even sweeter deal.

I look forward to buying the new island expansion content when it comes out along with the new set of vehicles (including the Back-to-the-Future-esqu flying car). This game definitely makes my top games list.