Oh my goodness, my eyeballs are bleeding and have literally fallen out of their sockets! You see, I've been playing Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, and should you blink, you crash!  It's bold, brash and in your face like none other, screaming with adrenalin-fuelled speed.  If they actually made real cars in the same manner your cheeks would be torn off and thrown against the rear windscreen as soon as you touched the accelerator.

Racing games have tended to fall into one of two categories, either simulation such as Forza, or full-on arcade offerings as per the Need for Speed series and indeed the previous Burnout titles.  This has all been well and good with the petrol heads being kept happy tweaking their anti-roll bar stiffness and the arcade racers left to crash into stuff whilst driving ‘on rails’.

A recent trend has shown that developers are trying to merge these sub-genres in an attempt to capture both sects of racers and therefore sell more units.  Sounds simple eh?  Take Grid; there’s a game that I would define as a prime example of one of these genetically spliced hybrids, the result is akin to Penelope Pitstop and Michael Schumacher having a child together (there’s an interesting concept).  Whilst I thought Grid was an extremely accomplished racer, to me it felt like a ‘Jack of all trades’ and didn’t quite cut it as a benchmark game.  Before playing Burnout Paradise I must admit I was slightly sceptical that Electronic Arts and Criterion may have followed suit by fixing something that ‘wasn’t broke’.  However I’m pleased to report that everything is hunky-dory in Paradise city, this is Burnout of old and then some.

Upon firing up Burnout Paradise for the first time, you’re greeted by what else?…  Paradise City by Guns N’ Roses!  This pretty much sets the tone for the game, rockin’!  A rather cheesy ‘DJ Atomika’ introduces himself and your playground – Paradise City.  After a great intro you’re champing at the bit to get down to some serious speed, the only trouble is your first ride is a total wreck.  So, the first job is to collect the old jalopy from the junkyard and get her fixed up.  Fortunately there are no complex tuning or upgrade options, you simply drive through a garage and ‘hey presto’ she’s sparkling like a new pin.  Navigating around Paradise city to points of interest such as a garage or a junkyard is relatively painless with an onscreen mini-map.  Additionally you can bring up a map showing the entire city, when I first saw this my single response was ‘Whoa!’  Paradise city is not only big, but it’s also teaming with events at every crossroad or junction where there happen to be traffic lights.  My good friend DJ Atomika informed me, during one of his broadcasts that this actually equates to over 120 different challenges.

Gone are the menus from Burnout 4: Revenge, Paradise is a free-roaming sandbox racer...  Go where you want, when you want.  For example, you can either drive around the city having fun looking for insane stunts to pull-off, or enter a ‘formal’ event at your whim.  The events are broken down into a few categories and are colour coded on the map so you can drive to the challenge of your choice.  ‘Race’ is exactly what it says on the tin, but still gives you the opportunity to use the Burnout party-piece and smash your opponents off the road.  The races are run point to point across the city and how you get to the finish line is completely up to you.  So not only do you have to beat the competition but also route-find as you go.  You just have to be extremely careful not to bin it whilst map reading, which is easily done.  ‘Stunt Challenges’ award points for ludicrous acrobatics, to win you have to beat a pre-determined score.  Fortunately littered around Paradise city are some rather handy ramps, for those ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ OTT stunts.  Probably my favourite event has to be ‘Road Rage’, the only goal is to smash a certain number of opponents off the road, known as a ‘Takedown’.  Of course your feisty opponents are trying to do the same to you so don’t expect an easy ride.  The carnage is truly spectacular, the damage engine has really been honed into awesome spectacle, and nothing else destroys cars as well as Burnout does.  Finally you have the ‘Marked Man’ event that sees you racing to a point across the city whilst trying to stay in one piece.  This isn’t straightforward as you are pursued by an angry mob in some seriously brutal cars with the single aim of smashing you off the road – Nice! 

All this destruction and huge ‘air’ is all fun enough but to keep your incentive going each successfully completed event rewards you with a point on your license.  As a ‘rookie’ Burnout driver you start at a ‘D’ rank, progress through the events lead to an upgrade of your license.  Higher licenses open up new events and the best bit; new cars!  How do you get the new cars?  Well, old DJ Atomica will give a ‘heads-up’ that a new car is touring around Paradise City.  In true Burnout fashion you smash them off the road and then they are deposited into your junkyards.  The only exceptions to this rule are when you are rewarded a car upon passing a license, or entering a special ‘Burning Route’ time trial to win an upgraded model of your current car.  The cars themselves, whilst all being fictionally named for obvious licensing reasons, are largely ‘familiar’.  Ferraris, Lambos, TVRs, they’re in the game and car buffs will no doubt relish cruising in their dream motor and giving it a nice flashy paint job to boot.  Aside from the aesthetic appeal of the cars each has a basic specification of speed, boost and strength.  Also, the cars are helpfully defined as to which event type they are most suited; race, aggression or stunts.  Using the right car for an event is paramount, particularly as you progress through your licenses.  For instance, using a race car for a Marked Man event ends in disaster very quickly; to succeed you need one of those big stocky muscle cars.  It just goes to show that even Burnout can employ a little bit of strategy, albeit fairly basic in execution.

The handling of the cars is pretty much as you’d expect, even a complete novice will soon be hand-braking around corners.  Obviously this is not a racing simulator and nor is it pretending to be, however the difference in the handling of the assorted cars is certainly noticeable.  The race cars feel light and nimble, whereas the aggressive cars are heavy and drift in huge proportions.  One thing I haven’t mentioned is ‘boost’ and it’s this feature that literally makes your eyes stand out on stalks.  Providing the boost metre is full you can press the ‘A’ button to unleash what is effectively nitrous-oxide on steroids, what was a car turns into a rocket ship on wheels.  You quite literally catapult along highways littered with ‘pondering’ traffic at speeds that would put the ThrustSSC to shame.  All good things come to an end, as does the boost; however the boost gauge can be topped up by visiting a gas station, performing a successful stunt or my personal choice – ramming an opponent off the road.  Putting it simply, the cars in this game are really fun to drive, whether you use the arcade style 3^rd person or slightly more realistic 1^st person makes little difference.  The cars just want to be driven to their absolute limit and beyond until you either melt your TV or end up as an unrecognisable ball of scrap.  

Paradise City is beautiful and has been made even more so with the ‘Cagney’ patch included in ‘The Ultimate Box’.  The city undergoes the cycle of day and night and looks absolutely stunning throughout.  The detail is sublime, draw distances seem infinite and on top of all this it runs at an absolute blistering pace without a hint of clipping or pop-up. Criterion has really delivered a title that exploits the power of the current generation of consoles.  Little touches, such as switching to a 3^rd person slow motion view when performing ‘huge air’ simply adds to the impact of the graphical sheen.  The sound is equally impressive with a huge range of engine noises and tones depending on your choice of car.  Crashes are accompanied with a more than satisfying din of destruction and overblown effects.  To go with this is a good track listing, which is certainly refreshing after the past ‘EA Trax’.  Only the ever so slightly annoying DJ Atomika represents a chink in the sonic armour.

On top of the wealth of the single player features you can easily take yourself online with a press of the D-pad and participate in an equally huge number of challenges on Xbox Live.  The Ultimate Box includes the latest online updates allowing you to participate in Marked Man, Road Rage and Stunt challenges against real people.  It all works fantastically well with minimal lag and an easy system to find games of your choice.  You can even party up with friends to tackle challenges together, whoever said loud cars are unsociable?

The ‘Bike Pack’ is included with this version of Burnout Paradise and is a fun addition that adds lots of extra speed on only two wheels.  The bikes have their own set of challenges thus giving yet more value for money.  So all you Eddie Kidd wannabes are well catered for; just remember that bikes are fast but ‘fragile’.  The final ‘goodie’ in The Ultimate Box is the ‘Party Pack’ giving a few turn-based offline challenges.  This is probably the weakest component of the add-ons and would have been much better had it been split-screen.  But you can’t have it all and I would assume that trying to retro-fit split-screen multiplayer into the Burnout Paradise engine is not straightforward.  Please note that should you have the original Burnout Paradise, the extras found in The Ultimate Box can be downloaded through Xbox Live. 

If you’re a fan of arcade racers, even a casual one, and haven’t yet tried the delights of Burnout Paradise then there really is no reason to delay in getting The Ultimate Box.  This edition is the crowning glory of Criterion’s efforts to keep Burnout fresh and they’re not done yet…  There’s several more downloads in the pipeline, and don’t think this is just greed, the previously released ‘Cagney’ and Bike Pack have been completely free.  Burnout Paradise has arguably received the highest critical acclaim for its downloadable content.  Criterion are a prime and worthy example of a developer looking after their fans.

Forget the competition, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box is quite literally that - Ultimate.  This is by far the most fun, beautiful and definitely the fastest arcade racer on the block.  Get in, fire up the engine and prepare to have your face ripped off.