Why I am not excited about Burnout Paradise

People that know me know that I love Burnout. It’s a great series, but with Critieron Games’s newest addition, I am left with the worry that the Burnout series will “go to hell”. And let me explain why.
My biggest problem is that they practically removed Traffic Checking (same way traffic can be hit to shoot the cars into other things. It was added in Burnout Revenge). You can check traffic, but it’s extremely difficult to do so at high speeds. Most of the time you will just crash. It brings players back to the old Burnout 2 gameplay of “watch out for everything” and personally, I don’t like it.

Secondly, where did DJ Atomica come from? Since when has he been in Burnout? What happen to that female person? EA assumes that since Burnout is popular they should put popular items from other EA franchises into it. NO! BAD EA! BAD! DJ Atomica shouldn’t be in Burnout. Put him back in SSX where he belongs. Another note on this, he is a horrible DJ in Burnout Paradise. He was so much better in SSX3. He never plays any music unless you are in an event. Nice job. Plus he tries to give “helpful” advice. But it seems so forced. I loved in SSX3 where his radio station actually sounded natural.

When I first played the demo a few days ago, I noticed a sad thing. You explore a huge map to get to other events. This is a tactic used in most games to compensate for not having much content. Like Transformers. Any game that suggests “free roaming” you can pretty much expect to have absolutely no content whatsoever. However, I did like the drive-thru idea in Paradise.

EA decided to put this blue tinting on the top of the screen. I find it the most annoying thing ever that probably originated from NBA Street V3 (most likely due to the exact same coloring) or some NFS title (I stopped playing any new NFS title due to the crappiness of the series).

If you have played the demo you might also notice how bad the camera is. The camera is much too slow and decides to rotate around your car as you back up. If the camera was faster in doing this I would be just fine. It’s not. Please please please fix the camera before you go gold EA (I think it’s too late now).

Another problem, cars and such don’t collide with objects on the street. So if I knock down a traffic light, the cars who were stopped will go right through the pole as if it’s not there. If you attempt to do the same, you will collide with the pole. Considering EA is trying to be somewhat realistic with its new car noises and starting the car and crap like that, it seems kinda silly if AI cars can go right through objects.

EA, please delay this game and fix the above issues. Please don’t ruin the Burnout series like you did with NFS. Thanks.