Burnout Paradise: Where has my Crash Mode gone?
Playtime: 20hrs (credits have rolled)
Picked up the game during Steam’s EA sale for about nine dollars, with the suggestion of a friend who has quite enjoyed the game on both xbox and pc. My first play session lasted five hours since the game play was easy to grasp and succeed in, and the reward system encourages the just one more race mentality. Dangling the sweet candy of a new car or a license upgrade just in front of my nose. It was this reward system that kept me hooked and playing when the novelty of the arcade racing had warn thin, plus I could catch up on some series while still winning events in the game. Though restricted open driving world has made me loose more events I wish to admit, roam anywhere games like GTA have left me thinking that wooden guardrails can be broken through to cut corners (Paradise disagrees).
Though I was winning and progressing through the game the mode that endeared the Burnout series to me was missing, “crash mode” was gone. It was only after the credits rolled I pulled up the Burnout wiki to discover crash mode’s fate. This mode is indeed gone, and replaced with “Showtime”. A mode triggered on any road that flings your car forward then uses the boost meter as jump fuel so you can hop your car’s burning wreck into traffic. It was more like playing the inverse game of Frogger, where your trying to hop onto every car on the roadway, than the original chaotic physics puzzle that made crash mode so great in previous games.
In the end I still need to put time into the multiplayer aspect of the game, but with the removal of Crash Mode I think my time with this game has come to an end. It was a little entertaining time sink while it lasted.