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Burnout Paradise Author Blog
Updated January 14, 2008

By David Hodgson

I’ve been striving for Burnout Paradise perfection for the last two months, and I’ve loved every moment of it. I can honestly say this is one of the best arcade racing experiences I’ve ever had (and I’m crusty enough to remember spending all my college money on Daytona USA and Stun Runner). While I was initially trepidatious about going back to the stringent, one-event gameplay style of Burnout Revenge, I soon relished the freedom of the massive, open world of Paradise City, and the numerous landmarks, thoroughfares, and cunningly-hidden shortcuts scattered about in this mad metropolis.

Ah yes, about those shortcuts. With the full help of the Criterion development team, I was able to create the only version of the entire Paradise City map to feature every single shortcut, off-road route, train track, and hidden area (you haven’t lived until you’ve attempted a triple barrel roll through a suspended piece of fuselage in the hidden airfield, or landed a quadruple barrel roll inside Lone Peaks Quarry). This map is the key to topping the online leaderboards and learning every inch of the game world. I admit it, I went slightly overboard showing exactly where everything is, but that’s the key to winning! In fact, the map is a pull-out poster, so you can drape it over your coffee table as you learn all the leaps, jumps, tunnels, and dips.

I took my increasingly awesome series of cars out for a spin (after noting how all of them are unlocked, naturally), and learned quickly which types are best-suited to the dozen different event types in the game (which is, in turn, easily learned from the strategy guide). I then went out of my tiny mind plotting the very best paths from each Racing event starting point to the goal, so you can finish first every time. I then managed a 200+ Road Rage rampage that took down the city’s most ruthless rivals, and wrote about how you can achieve (and even beat) this madcap score, too!

I then found ways to accumulate massive points during the infamous Showtime mode (the new face of Crash mode), rolling through signs, buses, and the most expensive vehicles in order to attain multiple-million-dollar damage totals. Oh, and I also spent two weeks on the Stunt mode alone, learning how to chain insane super jumps, billboard crashes, airtime, barrel rolls, and spins together in one gargantuan ride. Follow my advice, and you’ll easily reach the fabled 40x combos on your way to scores in the tens of millions!

Not only that, but I managed to acquire additional stats on all the different cars in the game, including how many “lives” each one has (vital for Marked Man and Road Rage events) information you’ll find nowhere else. After that, I realized there were almost 600 different “Discoveries”, including super jumps, billboards to crash through, and hundreds of fences to smash. So I located them all, and placed them on a map, along with dozens of the City’s landmarks, so you can slowly wean yourself from using the in-game map, and know each street just by looking at it. It’s a sad indictment of my own personal sanity that I can view any in-game screenshot, and know where it were taken in the game. With this guide, you will, too!

Finally, I spent some quality time with Criterion and Electronic Arts larking about online. You have to attempt an eight-player race across town to fully experience just how incredible this game is. Naturally, there are some online Freeburn Challenges to try out, too; 350 of them in fact. Does that include tips on achieving a 100 percent score on Power Parking? Of course it does! And, er, don’t tell anyone, but I end the guide with a list of each Freeburn Challenge, and how to attempt it, along with advice on gaining all the 360 Achievements and Paradise Rewards, before finishing with some super-secret revelations…

Make sure you grab a copy of the Burnout Paradise Strategy Guide, pour over that map, and get to the top of those online leaderboards in a blur of scraping metal and shredding rubber!