Burnout Paradise Remastered Review

Take me down to Paradise City! The Burnout franchise crashes onto the Nintendo Switch for the first time with Burnout Paradise Remastered with plenty of races, high speed crashes, and a giant city to explore. This marks the first time the franchise has graced a Nintendo console since Burnout 2 on the GameCube over 15 years ago, so it’s fantastic to see it return on the Switch.

This is the remastered version of the original game that was released back in 2008 on the PS3 and XBox 360, featuring updated visuals and a clean 60 FPS docked and undocked – an incredible feat that often isn’t replicated by other developers. It also comes with the 8 main DLC packs including Big Surf Island, Burnout Bikes, and Cops & Robbers pack. All told, there’s more than 130 cars, bikes, and hotrods to drive all over Paradise City. You won’t be bored here!

If you’re a multi-console owner you may have already checked out Burnout Paradise Remastered on the PS4, Xbox One, or PC, since it came out a few years back. There’s not really any new features in this version so a double dip may not be warranted, unless of course you want to take the game on the go and play in handheld mode. Unfortunately pricing might also be another barrier to entry.

Honestly the price of the game was the only issue I really had with the game. EA decided to release the game at $50 when it’s currently $20 on other platforms and, at the time of writing, it’s on sale for $10 on PlayStation’s store. Paying more than double the price for the same game with the portability option hardly seems like a wise decision. Other than that the game runs fantastic on the Switch and gives owners a big open world racing game which the platform doesn’t seem to have much of.

Racing around the city feels great and there’s always a new race or challenge to discover at every intersection. Winning races and completing challenges will upgrade your license and unlock cars that you can add to your growing collection. Because it contains all of the DLC cars there are plenty to choose from right from the start so you don’t have to play for too long to have a nice car. There are some great knockoff cars which look a lot like the Ghostbusters Ectomobile or the DeLorean from Back to the Future movies. This just adds to the fun and insanity of it all.

The driving mechanics are as tight as ever. Racing around the city at blinding speeds and suddenly e-braking around a corner is just as fun today as it was back in 2008. At every intersection there is a challenge or race to compete in, but I wish there would have been an option to select these challenges from the menu. I felt like this would have been a super easy fix to implement because I didn’t always like driving all the way across the map to get to a certain race.

Paradise City is a huge driving playground with tons of secrets to explore around every corner. I particularly enjoyed hunting down the red Burnout billboards to crash my car through and there are 200 of them to smash!

As I mentioned earlier the game looks damn pretty on the Switch and is a prime example of how Switch ports should be handled. There are no framerate drops and it’s locked at a steady 60 FPS undocked and docked. There is a slight drop in texture quality when in handheld mode, but I barely noticed it while driving around at high speeds. The game boasts a large track list from artists like Alice In Chains to Avril Lavigne and, of course, Guns N’ Roses, so there’s something in here for everyone. The cinematic crashes are spectacular in glorious HD as well.

As someone who played the original on PS3 it was a nice trip down nostalgia lane to smash and crash around Paradise City in my knockoff DeLorean in the palm of my hand. Burnout Paradise City Remastered is a fantastic example of how to handle a Switch port. There are no framerate drops, it looks amazing, and contains all the previously released DLC packs. My only gripe is that its price is unnecessarily high. So maybe wait for it to go on sale?

Tony Matthews

Tony has been gaming ever since he could walk. Pokémon Blue Version helped him learn how to read. His greatest accomplishment is not just having played the entire Kingdom Hearts series but also understanding it.