I don't know what it was, but Burnout Paradise never really grabbed me. Sure, it was fun, and the slow motion crashes gave me sex wee, but I had no definite reason to keep playing. Every few races I got to upgrade my license. Whooptee ***ing doo, all my races are reset, meaning i re-race them in faster cars!
Multiplayer I found didn't work very well except in free-roam. The connection just couldn't keep up with the game. It wasn't the connection or anything like that, but even with a ping of 52ms and a lightning fast connection, the ridiculous speeds you could reach made racing at that speed, trying to take out your mates virtually impossible outside of using a LAN