Review: Burnout Paradise Big Surf Island

Well folks, it’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. Criterion announced Big Surf Island a while ago and as the months have ticked away Burnout players have slowly seen that bridge reaching out from Paradise City and now they can finally cross it. Is the grass greener on the other side or does it have more in common with car crash TV? Why don’t you hit the jump and find out.

Big Surf Island is the largest piece of downloadable content to be released for Burnout Paradise yet and something that I have been waiting for for some time. The idea of having a whole new area to drive around and explore was something that I really couldn’t wait to do and the reason that i’m doing this review.

The first thing you’ll notice about BSI is that it’s quite a bit different to the original city. There’s a lot off off road areas for you to explore and, although at street level it might feel similar, there is a lot of little things that make this piece of content something that all Burnout players need to own. Like I said, BSI has enough differences to make this a great piece of content for those who love Burnout. The off road stuff is really cool and offers something that was rarely seen within the boundaries Paradise City. The biggest difference I found was the ammount of vertical areas that can be found here. Sure, there was a few building to building jumps in the original game, but here it seems that the rooftops can be explored for some time before coming to an end. This is something that was a little odd to me at first, but it’s something that I really like and something that offers a whole new type of Burnout experience.

Also added in here is a new game mode called Island Tour. Basicaly this mode is similar to a Burning Route and has you race around the city hitting checkpoints and getting to the finish within a certain time. Whilst it’s a nice inclusion, it certainly wasn’t nessecary but does help add some variety to the game, even if it is just a little bit. Alongside this ‘new’ mode all the regular modes are here which need to be finished to complete your new Island Lisence.

As with almost all of the other packs you also get some new cars, which, once again, wasn’t nessecary but is definiely a nice inclusion for Burnout fans. When you make your start in Big Surf Island your given the Dust Storm, a really cool dune buggy type car. I found that this car is pretty much key to suceeding on the island, but I definitely recomend unlocking it’s big brother, the Dust Storm Superturbo, as soon as possible. Alongside those two there’s a further seven cars that can be unlocked, including a toy version of the Jansen 88 Special (AKA the Delorean). That said, these unlocks don’t replace the original Legendary car pack.

Overall, I feel that this is the best piece of downloadable content released for Burnout: Paradise to date. For fans of Burnout this is something I whole heartedly recomend, it adds just the right ammount of the good stuff to warrant the purchase and really does nothing wrong. The only problem I found was that the island was a little smaller than I expected, that said it’s jam packed with stuff to do and is probably the best value piece of content for the game to date.

9.2/10

Secondary Comments – By Chris Malley

I’m a massive fan of Burnout Paradise, anyone who adds me on PSN will know this. In fact, for a while, it was all I played. No i’m not an ultra completist saddo, I really do love this game and what Criterion have done. I was, like all other Burnout fans, really looking forward to the Big Surf Island content and, thankfully, I wasn’t disapointed. Like Anthony said, the content adds a whole new, almost completely different, area to explore and adds a whole new layer to the gameplay. Not only are you driving along the road, crashing your car and hitting ramps, now you’re scaling car parks, driving on rooves before falling to the earth for close to thirty seconds. All I could think whilst playing this is, this is awesome. Anyone who owns Burnout Paradise needs to buy this and anyone who doesn’t go get it…now. As a wonderful side note, i’d like to mention the ammount of British pop culture references that Criterion included here, sure to amuse the UK fans and bemuse those who don’t get them. The Inspiral Car Park is a work of simple comedic genius. Well done guys.

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