When Burnout Paradise arrived in 2008, some players resented its diversion from the previous Burnout games, which focused on tight circuits and vehicular destruction. Others, however, found its open-world structure exciting and beautiful. Paradise City is a vast playground, its intricate streets, highways, tunnels and overpasses open and explorable from the start. Players are dropped into a junkyard, where they choose a car. Then they drive – and they don’t really stop.

While most racing games force players into menus and waypoint-dotted map screens, Burnout Paradise keeps you in your car as much as possible. You start races by pulling up at any set of traffic lights; you attempt stunts and jumps simply by driving around and finding promising-looking ramps; and you repair and repaint your car by driving through auto-repair stores. You can swoop between races, events and stunt runs without ever stopping, feeling out the very edges of your driving ability. This remaster’s enhanced resolution and frame rate bring it up to modern standards. Paradise doesn’t look as good as, say, Forza Horizon 3, but the retro sheen and flattering handling gives it a classic arcade feel.

Burnout Paradise feels incredibly good to drive. The cars tear through corners like wildcats, the slight understeer enabling chicane arcs through oncoming traffic. Dab the brakes and you can drift in neat, curved lines, recalling the glory days of Sega’s great coin-op racers. Taking a ramp at top speed, jet-boosting on to an overhead rail track, then smashing down on to the street again makes you feel as if you’re in the best Fast and Furious movie ever made.

Everywhere there are little secrets to find, gates to smash through and hidden routes to discover that will take you from the mountains to the city in a series of death-defying plunges. The environmental design, the spatial syntax of the map, the way the roads loop and curve over each other into great spaghetti junctions is masterful and perhaps has never been bettered. The array of events, from stunt challenges and races to takedown runs where you have to smash a set number of cars off the track, is varied yet focused.

There are no fast travel points, no waypoints, no trinkets to collect. You have to learn the environment, watching the mini-map and the compass. It’s a real challenge to go back to this stripped-back approach after years of more cloying and didactic racing-game design. Some will find the minimalist, idiosyncratic user interface too raw, there are no licensed cars, and the late-00s rock soundtrack is now dated. But Burnout Paradise isn’t just an interesting piece of history. It feels modern, generous and thrilling, and makes you want to hit the boost button on a Hawker Solo, turn up Avril Lavigne on the in-car radio and plunge through the city all night.