Formats: 360, PS3 (version tested)
Release: Out now
Publisher: EA
Developer: Criterion Games

A Marked Man event at sunrise. One more crash before reaching the final checkpoint and it’s failure. We take a punt on a sharply inclined off-road route, which turns into a long ramp. Up and up, star decals blur by as the course ascends. LCD Soundsystem’s Us Vs Them has been building in the background, and just as the chorus kicks in – “block, block out the sun” – the crest finally appears, and in a direct line, but far, far below, the final checkpoint. In a rush of endorphins and gravity, and against all the odds, we’re victorious.

The ski jump is the most dramatic of all of Big Surf’s Mega Jumps, but that’s not to say the others lack spark. The lighthouse one is spectacular, too – if you’ve enough speed you can fly right through where the light should be to land on the other side. Breathtaking and overblown, they encapsulate Big Surf, the first new piece of real estate to join Paradise City.

The island lies just off the eastern shore of the sprawling city, over a vast half-finished suspension bridge, and though it’s small in size – it takes no more than two minutes to drive the road around its circumference – it’s densely packed. Two-lane highways that wind through high-rises, tunnels and drift-friendly coastal switchbacks, building sites frozen into stunt-friendly configurations, wide beaches littered with ramps, off-road sections that lead onto tiny outlying islands and back again – it’s tautly engineered for stupid entertainment.

Big Surf is a greatest hits of Paradise City, with all its biggest thrills condensed into a single small island. There’s much to be found, too - 75 smashes, 45 billboards and 15 Mega Jumps – the three or four hours you’ll spend on the island will go by in a storm of discovery. The sheer amount on offer might lead you to assume that driving would consist of continual stopping, starting and awkward 90 degree turns, but Criterion has carved out many flowing routes through the small area.

The size has also made Criterion rethink the design of its 15 events. Though they’re still found at junctions, the standard races, Burning Routes, Marked Man and new entrant, Island Tours, which are simple time trials, are no longer point-to-point runs but instead delineated by a series of checkpoints, often laid out as a circuit around the island. For those irritated by Paradise’s uncomfortable pairing of high-speed arcade racing with on-the-fly route finding, the highly visible checkpoints will be something of a relief, though the limited number of routes means that one event can feel much the same as another. At least restarts are never more than a few seconds away.

Big Surf also offers nine new cars, including a new type, the Dust Storm buggy, which is available from the off. Though not quite as nippy as the racers, it’s tremendous fun to drive: easy to drift and highly manoeuvrable. More traditional types unlock as the island’s secrets are found, including four toy cars, a type previously only available with a previous DLC pack.

Aside from the odd quirk, including a fake wall that would send our car falling through the island’s geometry, and the game’s laborious new front-end (see sidebar), Big Surf is an extended sugar rush of an add-on that almost makes Paradise City feel staid, and as such is the most essential to date. At US$12.99/£9.99 on PSN/1000 MSP, it’s not cheap, but fans will find the cost little more than another barrier to smash through. Paradise just got extended time. [8]