Burnout Paradise developer Criterion Games have today released their 3rd free game update, called Cagney, for Xbox 360 and PS3. Main additions to the game include three new Freeburn game modes, 70 new Freeburn challenges and new vehicles & liveries for both versions, with the PS3 version also getting custom soundtracks support. Update: The Xbox 360 version of the update has been delayed until July 24th.
The full Burnout Paradise Cagney features list:
3 New Freeburn Game Modes:
1. Road Rage: Up to 8-player team event. One team must race through a series of Paradise City checkpoints. The other team must stop them.
Cue incredible chases and battling through the city, tons of voice communication as players co-ordinate their efforts.
2. Stunt Run (vs): Pull stunts to score points - hit barriers, billboards and ramps; ace barrel rolls, flat spins and massive airtime to score big. Everybody competes to simultaneously reach the biggest total. Hit your rivals to kill their scores and gain multipliers.
3. Marked Man: A player is selected at random and everyone gangs up to take them down. The Marked Man scores for reaching the end point intact and taking anyone down along the way.
70 New Freeburn Challenges:
• 70 new timed multi-part Freeburn Challenges
• Leaderboards for these challenges that log your best time (as well as those people who did it with you)
Vehicles:
• Hunter Olympus
• A secret Criterion Car!
New liveries:
• Rossolini Tempesta Dream
• Two fan-created liveries – the Oval Steel Racer and Inferno Hippie Van
• Two secret Criterion liveries!
Ranked Race Changes:
• Too much to report in this blog entry but click here for the full breakdown!
Custom Soundtracks:
• Custom Soundtrack support on PS3
Other high-priority fixes and updates:
• If you’re in a 3 or more player challenge and a player drops out, the remaining players can still complete it (subject to it being a challenge that can handle this!)
• “Previously” section on the search games list now displays Challenges, Today’s Best and Freeburn game modes, making it loads easier to decide which game you want to join
• You can now view Leaderboards and Options in an online game
• You can now mute other online players in the show players screen
• You can now mute yourself if you have a PS3 Eye/Eye toy
• We’ve increased time-out for online races, and if all players complete the races within the timer, then you go straight to results
• The Airfield has been changed to help with the drivability of the area and make it a little easier to complete the hoop challenges
• Online cars now show damage - roll up to the start in a half-destroyed Hunter Cavalry and everyone else will see it!
• Added a stronger display message if you rule all of Todays Best
• The Easy Drive menu & Challenges page now loops from top to bottom
• Fixed the navigation system so that it takes into account the next check point in a race
• Fixed traffic not reappearing in Freeburn after a no-traffic race
• Fixed online races using Lawrence Road - it’s been reporting finish distances with a little inaccuracy
• Revised 30+ car resets following crashes
• All new sound effects added for Easy Drive
• Driving backwards in Road Rage now ends the event as it does in Marked Man
• Option to invert camera axis for the look around camera on right stick
• Online player information made accurate on the instance a player goes through a checkpoint in races
• If you set VOIP mix to zero it is now saved correctly
• 1080i support for “almost HD” sets - PS3 only
• Improved the Standard Definition rendering on PS3
• New highlight to show the player in Today’s Best
• Easy Drive fades out if it’s unused for 20 seconds
• Boost chaining no longer possible by drifting in open areas
Burnout Paradise’s next big download (codenamed: Bogart) will be available on the PS3’s PlayStation Network and Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Marketplace on April 24. What follows is an overview of the fixes and enhancements that have been made.
The Top 10 problems reported by you have been fixed, these are:
* PS3 game can crash when a player is taken down and the player that has performed the Takedown leaves the game.
* The game indefinitely displays “Connecting to Paradise City Servers” if it’s having problems communicating with the rebroadcast server.
* Disconnecting the controller before a race begins can mean that race timings can be manipulated with players who didn’t cross the line first being awarded the win.
* Repeatedly joining and leaving a game with 8 players can cause the game to hang.
* Hammering the A (360) or X (PS3) after unlocking a car can cause the game to hang.
* East Crawford and Watt St achievements cannot be achieved if the player goes online and sets road rules before attempting them.
* Audio distortion when using 5.1 / DTS and looking back at the car.
* Enhanced 360 streaming performance stops instances where the game seems to pause for a second or so.
* Total time driven in player stats would stick at 145 hours.
* VoIP connection problems with 8 player games. This is now live on the Paradise City servers.
The update also adds the following game experience enhancements:
* We fixed Head-on Takedowns as these seemed generally unfair and unrealistic. Unfair low speed Takedowns have now been eradicated.
* Increase online race timer timeout so players have a greater chance of finishing the race.
* Fix drifting bug when drifting and boosting. There wasn’t any real control on the brake so players would grind around the walls of the corners. Giving you all better control of the car.
* Stabbing the boost has too much of a jerky behaviour in the car handling, when in Stunt Run.
* Surround sound fix - Centre speaker was 4dB louder, ruining the mix. The speech has now been positioned correctly.
* Increase the # of search results returned for online games.
* Increase Picture Paradise timer so it doesn’t kick in so quickly.
* Post event ticker commentary is not now displayed for disconnected players.
* Show player the number of Complete Challenges easily by listing X/50 in the Challenges menu.
Other high priority issues that have been fixed:
* Instances where Barrel rolls were not registering correctly in Stunt Run.
* Takedowns online were not counting towards the Total Takedowns.
* Some instances where Revenge Rivalries desync & don’t get fixed until players are updated online.
* Some instance where the Host couldn’t change the game access if the game was created through an invite.
* Online challenge issues where the challenge couldn’t be completed if it was started at the exact time that a player left the game.
* Incorrect rivalry updates when European players played against English or Japanese players. Online connection issues.
* Rich presence on 360 didn’t change correctly when there is a change in the game parameters.
* Instances where Friends were not being displayed on the mini map.
* Some online race start points face the players in the wrong direction
But that’s not all, after next week’s Bogart download, there’s another software update coming titled Cagney. It adds three brand new FreeBurn game modes.
Here’s how they work: Just hit the Easydrive menu, set up a Freeburn Game Mode then fire off Online Stunt Run, Marked Man or Road Rage – obviously there’s no loading!
1. Online Stunt Run:
* This is 8-player simultaneous online Stunt Run – everyone competes for the highest score within the 2 minute time limit and you can play anywhere in Paradise City.
* An on-screen display shows all player scores, so you can easily see how you’re doing.
* Earn multipliers for taking each other out but you lose your combo score, if you’re taken down.
* Eliminated players are greyed out of the scoring area but can exact brutal revenge by chasing after players that have managed to keep their combos alive beyond the time-out.
* For the first time, you can drive alongside someone as they complete a billion score in Stunt Run - you can absolutely use this mode to try and show off to your friends.
2. Online Road Rage:
* This is an 8-player online team event.
* At the start, everyone chooses their team (red or blue).
* One team of “runners” has to drive to a checkpoint then the finish – they can only see one checkpoint ahead.
* The other team has to take them down. These guys can see the checkpoint and finish and choose whether to wait and ambush in key locations, shortcut to the action if they get left behind or just follow the pack and cause chaos.
3. Online Marked Man:
* We randomly choose a “Marked Man”.
* There’s an intense few moments, while all players wait for the selection to be made – you want to stay close to other players, so you can hit the Marked Man, as soon as he’s selected but far enough away that that you can run like hell if it’s you that’s the Marked Man.
* The target is selected and a 90 second timer starts – you get 1 point if you survive and 1 point if you take down the Marked Man. After 90 seconds a new Marked Man is selected at random.
* If you’re the Marked Man, you can’t see the attacking players on the map, your car is a little slower and you don’t get boost.
* The session usually consists of around 10-12 minutes of intense gameplay depending on the number of players involved.
Criterion Games has announced that over 1 million copies of Burnout Paradise on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have been sold to gamers worldwide. Add this to the running total and that means that a whopping 15 million people have now bought a racing title in the Burnout series. “That’s a lot of Takedowns!” indeed.
This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee takes Burnout Paradise for a spin. While we gave it a 9.5 out of 10 fun factor in our Burnout Paradise review, Yahtzee’s gut reaction is to mock it, shouting “Hey everyone, come see Captain Crashes-A-Lot!”
Paradise City gives players license to wreak havoc in Burnout Paradise (AKA Burnout 5), the ultimate racing battleground, with a massive infrastructure of traffic-heavy roads to abuse. Gone is the need to jump in and out of menus and aimlessly search for fun like many open world games; in Burnout Paradise, every inch of the world is built to deliver heart-stopping Burnout-style gameplay. Every intersection is a potential crash junction and every alleyway is an opportunity to rack up moving violations.
Feel the adrenaline course through your veins as you take to the road for the first time in Paradise City, where the action is all around you. Explore the city, discover events, and look for the best opportunities to crash, jump and pull signature takedowns. In Burnout Paradise you’re given the keys to the city, but it’s up to you to earn the keys to the meanest and most dangerous cars on the street, and earn your Burnout license.
System: Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: Racing
Release dates: January 22th 2008 (USA), January 25th 2008 (EURO) Players: single player, 2-8 online multiplayer & co-op (hard drive required)
Developer: Criterion Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Origin: England
Welcome to Paradise City! Make action your middle name, as you control what happens when and where in Burnout Paradise! Immerse yourself in the open roads of Paradise City from the downtown streets through the hectic freeways to the sweeping mountain roads; the world is waiting to be explored.
Slam, Shunt and Wreck opponents in cross-town race events, where YOU decide the fastest route to the finish line. Hit the jumps and find shortcuts, smash through barriers and get to the places that other racers can’t reach to get that competitive edge!
Watch the Paradise City launch trailer.
The various event types you’ll come across are:
* Race: Races consist of the player and at least 1 other car. The player is given a location to race to. The player can take any route through the city to the location with the aid of a flashing road names at the top of the screen when the player is advised to turn. First one to arrive wins. This is the only available mode online. Online races can also include checkpoints that need to be crossed before reaching the finish.
* Road Rage: The player is given a target number of takedowns and a timelimit. A Road Rage event is won by meeting or exceeding this target in the given timelimit.
* Marked Man: In this event, the player is given a destination. At least 1 opponent is trying to stop the player from reaching the destination by scoring takedowns against them. The player must survive from start to finish in order to win (the player can crash/be taken out, but loses the event if he totals the car).
* Stunt Run: Players are given a target score. They must earn points towards that score by using boosts, jumps, drifts and other such stunt moves.
* Burning Route: Each Burning Route requires the player to use a specific car. Once the player is driving the required car, they race against the clock to a specified location. When a Burning Route is won the player wins an upgraded version of the vehicle they completed it with. The upgraded vehicle can boast extra boost power, more base speed or a stronger body (but usually in exchange for another category). This is the only kind of event that doesn’t reset when the player earns a new license because its tied to the car used to run it rather than the license level the player is presently at.
But exploring the city and doing events doesn’t have to be a single player affair. You can meet your friends online with the EasyDrive system that smashes through the tedium of lobbies and servers and cuts straight to the chase by inviting friends or other people to where you’re driving. Burnout Paradise provides a driving playground for you and your friends to play online on the Xbox 360 (and PlayStation 3).
Watch some Paradise City multiplayer footage.
So what are the main features of Paradise City?
* Explore Paradise – From big-surf beach, to downtown gridlock, there’s over 30 square kilometers (400 kilometers of open road) of the ultimate driving playground to explore from the get-go. Nothing is blocked off.
* Burnout Your Way – Just pull up to over 120 stoplights and spin your wheels (hit the gas and brake at the same time) to start one of five different events – the classic Race, Road Rage and Burning Route, and the all-new Stunt Run and Marked Man games.
* Instant Online – Burnout Paradise sets the new standard in online social gameplay. See your friends online with the EasyDrive Friends List and connect with them instantly (hit right on the D-Pad and choose who to play with and what events to do) without having to wait or exit your game.
* Team up or Takedown – Join forces with up to seven of your buddies to beat hundreds of online FreeBurn Challenges together or heat up the competition and go head-to-head in user created race routes.
* Road Rules – Make and break the rules of each road by setting speed and destruction records all over town. Track how many you own against your friends!
* Mugshots – Track the length and breadth of up to 2,500 online rivalries. In your moments of victory, grab mugshots of opponents who have connected their Xbox Live Vision, PlayStation Eye, PlayStation 2 EyeToy or other compatible (web) cameras. When a player is taken down, both players will have their photos taken and exchanged. Save these photos on your hard drive and gloat over them even more in your trophy room or export them for ultimate bragging rights!
* Speed, Speed and Even More Speed – The rebuilt, race-tuned Burnout game engine delivers intense speed boost gameplay at a super-smooth and super-fast 60 frames-per-second.
* Showtime: Crash Anywhere, Any Time – Feel like bringing chaos to the streets of Paradise? Press the two shoulder buttons and slide your car out sideways and make it start flipping. This sets your car wrecking, spinning and scraping down the road, smashing through traffic and leaving a trail of expensive wreckage in your wake.
* Crash Deformation – Burnout Paradise features an all-new deformation technology that gives players an astounding close-up and slow-motion view of super-real destruction.
* Cars – Muscle cars, exotics, hot rods and even supercharged SUVs, engineered to look beautiful whether they’re brand new or mashed into scrap. Choose from stunt, speed or aggression car classes, each built with their own unique boost ability to give you the upper hand for specific challenges. Shut down roaming rivals and rack up wins on your licence to strut the streets in a wide selection of unique rides.
* Take it Aerial – Go airborne and pull boost-earning barrel rolls and spectacular mid-air spins. Find the hidden jumps to reach secret rooftop routes and 120 smashable Burnout Billboards.
* Driver’s License – Start with a Learner’s Permit then rack up wins to progress all the way up to a Burnout Elite Driver’s License – the ultimate accolade for any safety-unconscious motorist.
Strap yourself in and get ready to own the streets! Watch some Paradise City gameplay footage.
Cruise around the vast city streets in Burnout’s first entry as a free-roaming racer.
Now let’s see how much fun Paradise City is on a scale from 1 to 10?
FUN FACTOR - 9.5
Looking back on the long-running Burnout series you’ll see each game has been a slight improvement upon the last similar game, just more tweaked and with better graphics. Developer Criterion went beyond that in Burnout Paradise and has created the best game in the series by making it an open world game. Want a new car? Drive through the Junkyard. Refill your Burnout meter? Drive through a gas station. Repair your car? I think I see a repair shop over there, the same is true for getting a new paint job, it’s all automatic by driving through it. That said, you’ll start out a little confused as the radio DJ Atomika explains the concepts of the game and how you can activate race events in the city, as well as Showtime mode which replaces Crash mode but makes it better and bigger by letting you activate it anywhere and anytime! And that last bit right there is where the power of this racing game without a story lies, you can do whatever you please or choose to gain new licenses. Your drivers license also keeps track of your records on every street, like fastest time and biggest jump or crash, which of course results in a spectacular slow-motion effect.
If you feel driving one of the 75 obtainable cars by the 120 events gets to be a bit lonely, you press a button and seamlessly go online with up to eight other players after selecting who to drive with and what to do, after which you get 50 more challenges for each number of players (so 350 challenges total). This instant “no menus” and “no loading” ease-of-use is a fantastic innovation on top of the open world concept (that might remind you of Grand Theft Auto games). A downside to this huge city is that after you start a race and stop, fail or finish it; it’s hard to find the beginning again to restart as you’ll have to find your way back, since you end up where you end up. The same is true for finding the finishing line, since I often found myself pausing the race by going to the map screen to find my bearings again. So navigation could use some improvement, which is a shame, but luckily most of the game is completely engrossing as you crash and cruise around. Even the A.I. is tough as nails and doesn’t hold back! You’re getting great graphics, a fantastic selection of music to play as your drive and it all helps enhance the experience of speed the game gives. With closed circuit tracks gone, you’re free to roam the city streets and find shortcuts, billboards, stunt ramps or try the various fun challenges and events. For anyone even remotely into racing games, Burnout Paradise is an amazing spectacular game to play, highly recommended!
Graphics - 9.0
Good graphics. Despite the huge open world, the game still runs at 60 frames per second, it never slows down which is quite an accomplishment. However, compromises such as the lack of day and night cycles and weather conditions have been made. But since it’s an arcade racer and not a simulator, these graphical effects aren’t missed when there’s so much else to be seen, especially the sense of speed, slow-motion crash effects, and car damage models are fantastic.
Audio - 9.0
Every sound effect to do with the cars, from the engine roars to crashes sound suitably impressive and really “drive” the game forward. The Burnout Paradise soundtrack is very diverse (including LCD Soundsystem’s Us V. Them and N.E.R.D’s Rockstar Remix) and usually helps to get that adrenaline pumping during racing events. Of course there’s the very fitting 1987 song “Paradise City” performed by Guns N’ Roses that greets you at the start menu and in-game. Stop driving for a few seconds and you’ll be taken to the fantastic additional Picture City mode where the streets fly by in black and white as classical music plays from the likes of Mozart and Verdi.
Ingenuity - 8.5
The controls feel perfect, they are finely tuned without overdoing it (it’s still an arcade racer) and respond naturally to your every move. You can’t beat the sense of speed Burnout Paradise gives you, which is mainly thanks to how well the cars handle. Navigating the city is hampered by races not restarting you where you left off (backtracking) and having to rely on the map too often to find your way. As for the rest of the gameplay, without in-game menus the way you enter events and go online instantly is smooth as silk.
Replay Value - 9.5
There are 75 cars to collect as you upgrade your drivers license from beginner to A class. Getting to 100% of the game will take ages if you play a suggested one or two hours a day, at least over 30 hours total. Add to this the fantastic fun online mode and you’ve got yourself a winner. There’s even Burnout Paradise downloadable content coming up, both free and paid, that unlocks more roads.
In an industry presentation today, EA revealed that new Burnout, Skate and Need for Speed games are inevitable (definitely not a surprise).
EA Games President Frank Gibeau revealed that both Burnout and Skate would “see extension” in the publisher’s fiscal year 2009 (which runs from this April through March of 2009) although he didn’t specify if that meant proper sequels or side projects such as Burnout Legends and Burnout Dominator, or some other form.
Since Burnout Paradise was a success, it’ll be interesting to see what direction they take the series for the next installment, even though we won’t know first details for a while, since Paradise just hit the gaming scene.
As for Skate, the relatively new property made it’s debut last September to challenge the Skate-God that is Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, which has had a stranglehold on the extreme sports skateboarding genre for two generations.
“Tony Hawk has been the Madden of that category for a very long time, and our performance in this first year of skateboarding has greatly exceeded my expectations,” Gibeau told investors. “I know they’re going to come back and be competitive, but these are the fights that EA knows how to win.”
The industry-tracking NPD Group has reported that through December Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground outsold Skate when you combine all versions of the game. However, EA’s Skate did outsell it’s rival on the Xbox 360 & PS3, the only two platforms the game appeared on in comparison to Proving Ground’s five platforms (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS and PS2). Which has spurred Activision to retool the Tony Hawk franchise for a new direction in the next installment so it can better compete with it’s new competitor.
And then there’s the Need for Speed franchise, which will also be taken in a new direction since the last installment, Need for Speed: ProStreet, didn’t meet EA’s sales expectations. Gibeau said he thinks it was because the series drifted too far from what consumers expected. ProStreet had dropped the tuner culture and police evasion aspects of previous installments in favor of perfectly legit closed track racing. For the next Need for Speed, Gibeau promised that the series would be getting back to its roots with a number of features, including open-world racing and a new highway battle mode.
Lastly is Mass Effect, which EA has already announced that in addition to planning the series as a Mass Effect trilogy, EA will publish Mass Effect on PC. And it might even continue long after the trilogy has closed off. In Gibeau’s presentation today he told analysts that it “will be a franchise for EA for a very long time.”
Just a reminder that Burnout 3:Takedown is coming to Xbox Originals this week(14th) for a price of 1200 Microsoft Points. Of course I say save your money for Burnout Paradise on the 22nd of this month but hey whatever floats your boat.
Did you delete the Burnout Paradise demo off your hard drive? Well you might want to fire that bad boy back up. Starting today (January4th) and running through January 14th the Burnout Paradise demo will have 8 player multiplayer enabled.
With it, a total of 13 new Freeburn challenges will be available for players to attempt - 3 challenges in 5, 6 and 7 player sessions, and 4 new challenges for those playing in 8 player sessions.
Burnout Paradise offers a true open world environment built for intense speed, excitement, and exploration.
I’m not really the biggest racing fan but I’m a sucker for destruction. Burnout Paradise will be a buy for me.
The full Burnout Paradise Cagney features list:
