Take me down to that GNR reference everyone else writing about this game has already made.

Burnout Paradise is pretty sweet.

Burnout Paradise
Achievements: 50 (35 offline for 715 gs, 15 online for 285 gs)
Online Play: Seems to be pretty healthy, expect it to be robust for a while since it's a fresh game.

I don't know where to start with this game. Take the Burnout series and have it make babies with GTA and you've got Paradise. The learning curve is simple, the exploration is great, and there's just waaaay too much to do.

I played for ninety minutes once I got it home and only cleared 7% of everything. There are places I've revisited four or five times and found new stuff each time. I love this freaking game.

One thing that threw me early on is how to save and back out (because I never read the manual); if you hit RB once after pausing the game, you'll find the save/load option, as well as the place you're supposed to enter promo codes for unlockable cars. GameStop gypped me on the promo card with the code for the Steel Wheels car, but you can find it on the GameFAQs board easily enough. There are at least three codes that work, just make sure you include the spaces and capitalize. The store codes (walmart, gamestop, circuitcity, bestbuy), however, can be lower case and unspaced.

There may be more codes forthcoming, so I'll keep an eye out. Please take note that the PAL version has different codes because Europe has different store chains, so be careful if you go googling yourself.

I love the Vision functionality, and it doesn't bug me that it prompts you for new license photos after each challenge, at least not yet. For those of you without the camera, I think it subs your gamerpic for the photo, as that's what the PS3 version of the demo did for a friend of mine.

Another nice touch was giving the different car classes different applications of boost. Aggro cars get more by smashing stuff up, Speed cars can refill theirs by using a bar up without letting go (called a Burnout, string them together for bonus action), and so forth.

Agh. Agh. I want to fawn over this for hours but I need to work tomorrow, nevermind get in a little more time with the rental games I'm working on. BulletWitch is starting to grow on me, but that could be because I've just been milking the first stage for upgrade points so I can max everything out and cruise this bitch in just a few tries. Not that it's all that hard; I almost laughed aloud on the second stage when the game was telling me the huge Gigas dudes should have a weak point while I was already shooting the painfully obvious pulsating bulge on their chests. Thanks, in-game help!

Bomberman still kind of sucks, though. Bleh. Blue Dragon will probably rule after I stop grinding the Monster Fight x100 achievement.