Take Me Down

As many of you already know on the 18th/19th April six of the Ready Up staff became record breakers and living legends due to playing Burnout Paradise for 24 hours.

I’ve never been big on driving games. Grand Theft Auto is the closest I’ve gotten other than the odd go on a Colin McRae game. Or Outrun. Or Mario Kart. Or Micro Machines but you get the drift. On the whole my eyes seem to automatically bypass any racer on the shelves. I was yet to try a car game on the Xbox 360 and once I heard about the Ready Up record attempt I figured this one may as well do.

So on Saturday 18th April I loaded it up thinking that at least in a very small way I’d feel a part of what the guys were going through. I had barely driven out of the junk yard when a multiplayer invite was sent my way and…

… OMG! Just how kewl is this game?!

I immediately lived up to the stereotype of women being terrible map readers. Although I’m improving now, at first I couldn’t for the life of me find the right roads to get to the “red blob” in order to take part in challenges with the others. I’ve had fellow gamers be my vocal sat nav, actually drive back to retrieve me and probably had them rolling their eyes at how it was possible for me to drive through every road on the map aside from the one I actually needed to be on. Thankfully they are very patient and I have only heard “come on Libi!” through my headset a few dozen times.

The mix of challenges is fantastic and very addictive. Just… one… more… go. The pride in being able to complete a challenge involving communication and teamwork. The agony in failing to do that double barrel roll after the fifteenth time. The pleasure in finding a great jump and sailing through the sky to beat an airtime record.

You don’t even have to do anything at all and it’s tremendous fun. I could play cat and mouse for ages just trying to Takedown other players. “Rivalry Reignited”? Awesome, bring it on! Plus it makes for some totally disturbing gorgeous shots from those with a 360 Vision Cam.

The cars themselves are fab. Being taken down by someone with Ecto-1 humming the Ghostbusters theme tune? You can’t beat that. I’ve only unlocked seven cars so far so I’m a little limited but I make up for it with the most beautifully stunning, eye catching paint jobs ever. I’m hugely tempted to slather random patches of neon green, yellow, pink and purple all over the family car.

Oh and the soundtrack! I can be happily racing around and then on comes Twisted Sister, Guns n Roses, Adam and the Ants and Faith No More! Okay Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” seems an odd choice but I bet you anything you’ve sung along with it in your head, hey hey you you, don’t try and deny it!

The only part I’m not so keen on is the actual racing. I mean well, start off with everyone else but soon get distracted by a shiny red billboard and veer wildly off course but Burnout Paradise is so much more than endless laps. For me it’s obviously the multiplayer interaction that makes this game hence my lack of unlocked vehicles. Having a great community to play it with increases the joy immensely. So I thank everyone I’ve swerved manically at for bringing me so much enjoyment. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get back to that junk yard, this paint job isn’t quite lurid enough yet.