Burnout Paradise (Xbox 360)

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Online play will be completely seamless

Most enticing are the Stunt Runs though, which require you to achieve a maximum score in a time limit. Points are rewarded for jumps, rolls, spins and slides, while smashing scenery and chaining tricks with your boost both chains a combo and ups the score multiplier. These runs require a delicate balance of pace and strategy, as you plot a course that is as packed with as many jumps and drops as possible.

For all these various tasks there are dozens of different vehicles available to unlock, which are divided into three types. The first is the fairly self-explanatory Speed Car, which is fast and light, but rather weak. Next is the agile and strong Stunt Car, which is perfect for launching into the air. Last up comes the Aggression Car; built slow and strong, and perfect for crushing you automotive rivals. The cars themselves are fictional and stylish, and feature some quite astonishing crash damage. While they are easy to unlock, they remain unplayable until you spot one on the streets and destroy it with a swift ramming. Your own vehicles do respawn if they are written off, but most take a considerable pounding before they are totalled.

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There are also numerous subtle and tidy innovations that add a great deal to the experience, and most importantly, maintain both the sense of a totally open world and Burnout's thrilling speed. Passing through a repair shop or boost-replenishing petrol station doesn't require you to stop or even slow down. You can quit any event by simply pulling over to the side and remaining stationary for a couple of seconds. A vast myriad of collectable destructible targets reveal a seemingly infinite and utterly necessary maze of back roads and shortcuts that open up the map into a speed freak's paradise. The list goes on.

There's also an appealing focus in the online game on playing with friends. Calling up a friends list allows you to drop in and out of multiplayer games from the single-player game with impressive and apparently seamless fluidity, negating the need for a lobby, and there's a wonderful tool for capturing the mug shots of your defeated friends that you can collect in a personal treasure trove of victories. There is an abundance of creative co-operative goals, and a wealth of more typical racing options for the 'hardcore' online racing fan.

There's no menu, which is odd at first but works really well.

There's also some curious niggles that might make extended play a little less appealing. The junction system means that if you fail a mission you must endure driving all the way back to have another go, or hop randomly from one to another; a tiny problem that may feel like a monster when you are tackling the tougher of challenges. The simplicity of the online system seems a little too good to be true, and constantly revisiting junkyards to change your car to one more suitable for an individual mission may become tiresome.

However, Paradise city looks like a fantastic place to go driving. It is a sun-kissed hotchpotch of modern Americana, and its winding roads and crowded highways make for perfect Burnout fare. Its combination of realism and more stylised elements give it a feel not dissimilar to the movie Bullit, and it creates definite Burnout playability that is both distinct from and comparable to Flatout: Ultimate Carnage and GTA. Paradise isn't without its poisoned apples, but compared to the brash ugliness of ProStreet it looks like a great place to waste some rubber and guzzle fuel.

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