To keep up with the free roaming concept, you can drive around casually or aggressively as you like. Need a quick boost refill, and then drive right through a gas station for example. You are rarely required to actually stop playing the game unless you need to switch cars. For later events in particular the vehicle specific ones the game becomes a little too much stop and go. Because you to drive all the way back to your junkyard to switch cars and then head back to the event it ruins that fast paced, do everything on the fly gameplay Burnout: Paradise offers. I’m sure there could have been a much more elegant solution.

So you can play Burnout: Paradise a little like this. Enter your junkyard get that Saleen S7 type sports car, drive around casually, find a secret jump, enter an intersection to start a road rage event, finish the event, jump straight into showtime mode, drift around a hairpin turn in the oncoming lane, destroy your car, fix your car up instantly at a repair station and do whatever you want next. Everybody’s time in Paradise City will be different and I haven’t even talked about the kick ass multiplayer mode more on that later.

Time to talk about Showtime mode or Paradise’s version of crash mode. My question to Criterion is why remove something so great!?! The great thing about crash mode is you have a preset scenario with specific cars and specific way to approach it. As so many have said crash mode was almost like a puzzle. Hit the proper car at the right time and insane metal bending destruction was to follow. Crash mode was just great fun all around I played and beat through every crash mode event in previous events. Showtime mode just isn’t as good.

So first off you have to launch you car into showtime mode, the cool thing is that you can do this anytime, anywhere, during an event, after or whenever you like. Simply press L1 and R1 and you’re off. So now you control your car using the d pad and press X when the car hits the ground and time it right so you keep on bouncing around and gain momentum. As soon as you enter showtime mode the amount of regular cars found on the roads increases so it’s pretty easy to crash into them. It feels kind of artificial in that sense but it’s also quite funny to see a car explode after you just grazed their rear bumper. There must be explosives ready to blow at the slightest touch in every vehicle.

Now your doing all of this while your burnout meter is decreasing and refills after each vehicle you destroy. So you can pretty much activate this any time you want and keep it going as long as you want but honestly it’s just not as fun as the good ol’ crash mode we’ve come to love. It’s not as structured as crash and it’s as if you’re given too much freedom. It doesn’t build up to anything beyond bouncing your car over and over and touching other cars to keep your boost meter filled. You’re given a monetary value to the damage you’ve caused, how long you traveled but after that your car is repaired all the destroyed cars are gone and that’s pretty much it. After that you’re off to do something else, I’m not the only one who wants crash mode back. I wouldn’t be surprised that something similar comes via the inevitable DLC.