So I finally got to hoon around a few hours in Burnout Paradise last night. My first thought was this is like the Oblivion of racing games... you can kinda just go wherever and do whatever you want off the bat, but there still is a path to progression.

I also really dig the soundtrack, it's probably one of my favorite EA trax to date. Of course music is all personal pref, so some will hate it, but it is right up my alley. One funny thing i noticed was a few songs were rehashed from the original 1994 Road Rash release on 3DO - notably "Rusty Cage" by Soundgarden, and "Duel" by Swervedriver.

One of my favorite aspects so far is the ability to instantly switch into Showtime mode, which is the replacement for an organized crash mode - its great if you get into a big wreck unintentionally too, and just want to explode into crashing action, as you can activate it mid-crash (or any time you want really).

The only thing that seems like it could be irritating later in the game is the inability to restart a race instantly - you have to drive back to the starting grid. While at first this doesn't matter too much, as there is so much to do, i can see it being annoying later on when there are like 1 or 2 races you are trying to knock out.

Anyway, the game is better than I expected from playing the demo, so I'm happy about that.