Burnout Paradise

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3
Verdict: A brave new Burnout
Rating: 4½/5
Always one to champion gaming's ability to let you do things that in real life would see you hospitalised, incarcerated or dead, the Burnout series has featured highly on my list of greats. The high octane, crash fetishising gameplay is second to none (and thankfully nothing to do with J G Ballard), and puts chills into anyone I give a lift to after they've seen me play it (fear not, my aging Nissan Sunny doesn't have nitro).
After four iterations it's easy for a series to tire - just look at other yearly updated EA games like Need for Speed. Criterion were obviously aware of this and have worked to a bold new vision to reimagine Burnout while keeping it essentially the same. And what is this vision you ask? Paradise City.
Burnout Paradise drops you into a massive sandbox city where you can drive where you want (think GTA without the legwork or gun crime). No longer choosing between static tracks in a menu, you haphazardly determine the route yourself - from the traffic lights where you choose to initiate a race to the finishing line, the city lays naked to your improvised navigation.
Different car classes seek to replicate iterations in the series - from the speed based, burnout chaining of Burnout 2 to the aggressive, insanely fun takedowns of Burnout 4, there's something for every individual fan.
Graphics and mechanics are stunning as always, with spectacular emphasis on slow motion crash physics whenever something as trivial as a wall gets in the way.
The other feature Paradise wears proudly on its sleeve is online play. With a few presses of the D-Pad your friends can seamlessly drop into your game and meet up for impromptu races while Live Cam support spices things up with takedown snapshots of their mug, or worse.
With such progress comes disappointments though - the lack of quick restarts are divisive in their omission and the necessary reliance on improvised navigation means too much time can be spent with one eye on the mini-map instead of the road. Extended play soon sees you adapt though and in the face of how plain awesome the rest of the game is, they're minor grumbles. Much like the criticisms of my driving.