I've clocked about 10 hours, giving me about 30% completion. I have about half of the awards as well, and am working through my B license. And for whatever it's worth, my first game in the series was #3.
Event types first, but let me note: when you're working on your license, every time you "level up" and get a new license, completion status for all events (save Burning Routes) goes away. This is probably the largest reason there's no "reset" button for events, because after enough points on your license, most everything clears out and you can do them again.
ROAD RAGE: I know we all played this in the demo, so just be aware that there's really no differentiation between each different Road Rage event other than starting point. The first one you do requires 3 takedowns, then 4, then 5, and so on. No fixed routes makes this more enjoyable than RR was previously, if that's possible.
I do enjoy that they took the HUD arrows away from the cars you're supposed to take out, as it's a little more challenging to have to track their movements rather than drive at the cars with arrows over them.
RACES: I haven't hit any races with checkpoints yet, for what that's worth. All the races end at one of eight spots on the map, notable with the overhead red banners. There's one in each cardinal direction, as is explained in the game opening. Other than that, you know, it's the regular racing mechanism.
STUNT RUNS: I have grown to hate these. The idea seems good enough (score n points in x time), but there are some things that don't add to your combo (near misses, I think), and the things that multiply your combo (billboards, big air) require a bit of pre-planning. I end up trying to drive to another multiply-friendly area and gunning the boost for a second to reset the combo timer. These feel like a drag comparatively.
BURNING ROUTES: Now, *this* is where restart is needed. Each car type has one burning route. Learn from my mistakes: if you're in a car, and you see an orange circle with a star in it on the radar, that means "Hey, you found the burning route for this car, so just in case you're looking for it, drive this way, dummy". I spent way longer than I'd like to admit driving around in frustration trying to find the one for the car I'm in before realizing this.
Clearing a BR gives you not only a point on your license, but a "custom" version of the car you're in. "Custom" seems to mean "a point is removed from speed and added to boost". So they're *mostly* worthless, but for completion sake you're going to be doing all of these anyhow.
MARKED MAN: These are quite fun, and with no time limit, it's a little more strategic than the other modes. If you're getting bashed up, it's definitely in your favor to go off-route and find a repair shop. The AI does get more aggressive the higher you level up - at the lower levels, driving slow would confuse them, but where I am now, they won't hesitate to take advantage.
As for the side missions:
SHUTDOWNS: Every couple of license points, you'll get word of a new rival on the street in some car you don't have. As you putter around town, you'll eventually have them cruise by you, and you have to take them down. I really love this; I'll be driving towards a race or something and suddenly get completed distracted trying to ram some idiot in a pickup truck. They don't show up on the radar or anything, so you have to keep your eyes peeled for someone driving erratically.
ROAD RULES: So one place EA could have really done better is with invoking the Road Rules modes. Road Rules includes speed records per road and showtime crashes (more on that later), but unless you know to hit Up on the d-pad, you'll never invoke them, ever. When you hit up, you'll cycle through modes in this order:
Off -> Speed record (offline) -> Speed record (online) -> Showtime (offline) -> Showtime (online)
Why there's separate stops for offline and online baffles me. I tend to leave it in online mode all the time.
SPEED RECORDS: To be honest, I haven't been focusing on these too much.
SHOWTIME: Showtime is the replacement for crash mode, and the saddest part is I bet 60% of the people who play Paradise will never figure out how to get into it.
What you do is (after you've passed 4 events - don't ask why!), you hit L1+R1 at any point, your car swerves horizontal and then flips into the air. Then you crash with glee. But I repeat:
you have to hit a two-button combination to even get the thing started. This isn't a big deal for us, but this is one point that the game doesn't drill into your head repeatedly, so I expect casual gamers to miss this small detail.
While I do miss regular old set-piece crash mode, there's something to be said for the freedom of being able to pick and choose when you want to drop into it. You have more control over your car in the air (since your boost is constantly refilling with each hit, which means you can bounce more), and judging your bounces becomes addictive. So I'm willing to say that Showtime mode is flawed (mostly for how you get into it), but enjoyable.
I want impressions on how long this would entertain a 1p only gamer.
It depends.
I find the free-roaming fun; searching for crash gates or jumps, trying to find every event intersection. But you may just want to be dropped into events, and the game isn't going to do that for you.
I can deal with their being five main event types and then all these little side things, but it can get repetitive. Road Rage gains a lot of liberation from not having a set route, but then I realize that I am not paying any attention to where I'm driving, and I can easily end up on the other side of the map.
Also, if you're really not going to do multiplayer at all, you're going to miss out on 350 missions that *are* varied, and a lot of fun. Last night I was doing a three person mission where you each had to jump over the other two cars in the Downtown Park. Getting there, figuring out which jump it was, taking turns making the jumps - it's very cooperative, and with the right teammates, it's a hoot.
(That said, you're going to want to shore up some friends for this fast, because from what I've seen, most people Freeburning right now ignore the challenges and just want to crash into each other. Philistines.)
So if this was just a single player game, I'd probably give it an 8/10 - flawed but enjoyable. With the online - and with the right group to play with online - it's a 9.
