Criteron Games have recently released the official route map of Paradise City. Now we can see what’s beyond those pesky concrete barriers that you hit all to often in the Burnout Paradise demo. All I’ve got to do now is memorise all those routes and I’m away. Easy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Paradise City map:

Those avid TAG readers will notice that the map shown above has changed somewhat since we first revealed it nearly a year ago. Here’s what the Paradise city map looked like 12 months ago:

Amongst all the route changes, large chunks of the map have been chopped, including the airport. Did you have to cut the airport, Criterion? I quite fancied going all GTA 3 and driving recklessly between all the planes. Boo. Anyway, the map is still pretty big, as anyone whose played the Burnout Paradise demo will testify.

You can download a hi-res version of the map from Criterion’s Burnout Paradise Downloads page.

Update 2nd Mar 08: Here’s a great interactive Burnout Paradise map. It contains all the locations of the super jumps, smashes, billboards etc.

Burnout Paradise is out now on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

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Long-time readers of The Average Gamer may have noticed a certain tendency on my part. Every once in a while I come over all excitable about some aspect of gaming. I’ll write an entire series of posts about it. Then the series stops. Abruptly.

I do apologise. Here is part 4 of How To Write an RPG Journal - Maps. Turns out maps are quite big enough to warrant their own section. For those of you who missed the series back in January, have a look at RPG Journal Part I - The Basics, RPG Journal Part II - The Categories, and RPG Journal Part III - Information.

Maps

Maps are important. Incredibly important. Even when your game isn’t the size of World of Warcraft. I know, it’s not the sort of thing that gets mentioned in reviews. Trust me, the map feature is sorely missed if it’s not there.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If I recall, it didn’t have a map. If it did have a map, it was next-to-useless. Remember that giant bird cage in the menagerie? I climbed all the way to the top of that. Then I went on holiday. When I came back a month later I had no idea where I’d been or where I was going. I spent a few days running around in large but unproductive circles before moving on to a more rewarding game. Seamlessly-blended levels are pretty and immersive but make everything look very samey.
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