But who are we kidding this is Burnout! Unless you are an awful Burnout player your cars aren’t supposed to look so pretty for long. Paint gets scraped off as your grind your car against a guard rail, each accident cause what has to be some of the best real time deformations on a vehicles seen in a game. When you finally do slam into that barrier at 200 MPH the game lets you know you just f***** up. You will feel every crash, see every window break and tons of bits and pieces of you car will just be all over the place. Some accidents will make you cringe and most will cause you to go oh s*** it’s very well done. It’s all very visceral. To add to the immersion factor there are tons of different replays of your insane crashes, various camera angles, slow mo, etc. A driver’s seat camera would have been great too have been awesome though. Naturally your vehicles affect the crash outcomes. It’s more difficult to destroy one of the aggressive vehicles like the van when compared to one of the compact racers. In fact with the heavier vehicles there is a good chance your car will survive the crash and be able to continue.

The city and architecture also deserves a round of applause. The main city, the highways, mountain roads everything has tons of detail and has its own distinct feel. You’ll know when you’ve reached the Wind Farm up in the mountains or when you entered the grungy industrial district. Because you’re awarded for exploring you’ll be spending a lot of time just driving around and taking in the sights. The detail in the environments, buildings, stationary objects is just as impressive as the vehicles. I’m glad to see that EA went all out. Surprisingly though some of the roads, highway routes, secret paths seem a little bit familiar. After all there were similar types of tracks in previous Burnout games and EA did the free roaming car bit in Need for Speed: Most wanted already. I’ve had a couple of instances of déjà vu when exploring Paradise city.

The blur effects are put to good use to create that sensation of flying through a busy intersection and crowded city at high speed. I hope you have quick reaction times because Burnout is twitch gameplay at its best. And when you get into the really really fast cars and use your turbo button, well you need to experience it on your own really

If you have an HDTV then you are in for a treat. There is minimal aliasing but again the game runs perfectly at 720p resolutions and everything is clean and crisp.