I'm not so sure that the Burnout formula works in an open world map. The biggest problem is that half of the time you're looking at the minimap instead the road so you can navigate correctly. The speed feeling is great, but in this case it's detrimental to the game since you will be crashing a lot due to looking at the minimap. The best strategy actually is to stay behind your rivals just so you can see where you're going and accelerate in the last miles.
Another problem is that basic stuff like changing your car is tiresome. You have to go to the junkyards (which are only a few) and even there waiting the game to load so you can see a pointless animation of said car dropping from the sky.
Just let me change cars on the go, it's an arcade racer who cares?
You also have specific car races but you need to go back to the junkyard to change car and drive back to where they are to enable them. Too much busywork.
Another major problem is that you can't deactivate the slo-mo crashes. They don't add anything, just more annoyance.
Last but not least the game is a perfect representation of its era... it's ugly. Everything looks grey and miserable. They should call it Burnout Siberia instead of Paradise.

Now having said all that it's time for the good stuff.
It controls great. Even at insane speeds you always feel that you control your car.
There are many secrets to discover and it's really fun to just drive around.

Overall, pretty good game. You have your races, road rages, time trials, etc.. Face off was brought back which was absent from revenge. The open world theme was amazing and it was a real breath of fresh air for the burnout series. I will say, it was really annoying that there was no way to set way points on the map, and that every event was really far away. Another thing, it was an absolute SIN for them to get rid of crash mode. Crash mode is part of what made the burnout series so fun. Still tho, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a blast playing this game when I did. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Burnout games are phenomenal, Legends for the PSP was way up there for me as a kid. Easily one of the best handheld games ever made. This on the other hand just doesn't work. I played Paradise when it first came out around 2008 and remember dropping it pretty early on. Revisiting it in 2023 I could barely play an hour. The driving is great, the soundtrack is solid (tho not as good as Legends), but the open world stuff is abysmal. Driving from race to race feels so much worse than selecting the next thing you want to do from a menu. The scale of the city makes the challenges annoying. I'm spending more time looking at the map to make sure I'm going the right way than I am looking at the road.

I'm reminded a lot of my disappointment playing Elden Ring earlier this year. I liked DS3 but the open world stuff in Elden Ring just ruined it. Instead of going through meticulously designed dungeons I was fighting the same copy pasted mini bosses over and over in between long walks across empty spaces with a few enemies scattered around. Burnout Paradise is like the racing game version of that experience. It stinks.