So my friend downloaded the latest Burnout Paradise demo from Xbox habitable, and I can say that the game is shaping up fairly nicely. EA better not just stop at the demo, though. I’d hate to see that series go to crap.

My friend played it first, and the first duration I saw him crash I had to bite my tongue from saying, “Oh, snap.” You see that’s the thing about the Burnout series, the emphasis isn’t on beating your opponent in a race. The focus is on driving around like a madman and trying to produce the coolest crash possible, and whether you take out your opponent with you all the better. I’m surprised Jack Thompson or the other anti-game groups haven’t jumped on that, and warned the public that Burnout could cause citizens to drive recklessly. besides, in Paradise you are treated to a little slow-motion film of you wrecking your car. I never thought shattered window pane fragments could look so beautiful.

Aside from the aesthetic, there is no cumbersome menu to deal with. You load up the game, and you start driving – it’s that simple. The demo consisted of driving around a section of Paradise City, trying to land barrel rolls off of ramps, and crashing in style. I assume that the game will follow a sandbox style, a style in which the player can go anywhere and interact with the game environment a la Grand Theft Auto.

To those who say that gamers will get tired of the game soon, you underestimate how fun just messing around in a

game like that could be, particularly whether you have humans hitting the asphalt along with you.

When I got a hold of the controller, the game controls felt natural.

With different cars and more areas, I can see where that game has the makings of being a great without player for a couple of hours. I didn’t get to see the multi-player aspect but supposedly the process to add humans to your racing world is seamless.

“Don’t mess that one up. Seriously, don’t,” is all I have to say to EA.

The game isn’t perfect. For one, the voice actor that plays the DJ, which instructs you on how to play and comments on the action, needs to be changed immediately. When the guy started talking at the beginning of the demo, I thought that it was just part of the intro film. But when I heard him giving me tips on how to brake, I wanted to take a spoon and shove it in my ear, considering, to quote Lewis Black, “If I’m going to hurt that not good, I’m going to do it to myself.”

There’s plus the fact that you have to drive all the way back to where you started a racing event (they’ll probably be overlooked as you’ll be having too much fun wrecking your car) whether you fail it and want to retry. whether they’ve streamlined everything, why did they miss that?

Burnout Paradise is slated for a January 2008 release. Hopefully it will be polished to perfection by soon after. — Elvis Ramirez