Paradise is massively over rated IMO and was more and more frustrating to play the more time you put into it. Having a crash mode could have elevated it a little more but 3 would have still won out for me.
I agree with you on Burnout 3. But Paradise has a per street crash mode high score, which while not as good as 3s, is enough to scratch the devastation itch, and it's easily accessed on steam. So I don't think it's fair to say it has no crash mode. Just a vastly inferior one!
Got Paradise after playing Takedown into the ground and words could not express my disappointment. I had fun and all but it never felt as good as Takedown did. Open world and Burnout is just not my favorite combination
I think the best thing about Paradise was it was a new generation of consoles and the graphics really had a feel for its own. The crashes were great. But no crash mode just let it down. I kinda enjoyed the open world concept. But Takedown is 100% THE burnout game.