Metacritic: Xbox 360 - 88 | PS3 - 87 ...is the fifth Burnout game for consoles, and the first for Windows. It is available NOW in all regions for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, with the PC version coming on February 6th. Burnout Paradise - The Ultimate Box is a rerelease of the game that contains all the previously-released free packs (new cars, challenges, online modes and bikes with a day/night cycle and weather), as well as the Party Pack, a collection of local play modes, all on-disc. It's available now worldwide for PC, and in Europe and Asia for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Burnout Paradise is also available on Playstation Network for twenty bucks. The Party Pack is also available to buy separately as console DLC if you already own the game for 800MSP/£7.99 (or equivalent). Also coming on Thursday Feb 19th: Legendary Cars! Knock-offs of the DeLorean, KITT, Ecto-1 and the General Lee coming to a console near you for an indetermined price! ORIGINAL MASSIVE OP: Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Not your father's Burnout Criterion decided to go in a different direction for Paradise. Instead of a grinding progression of event after event, you are dropped into a city. Paradise City. Every junction is a new event, which you start by parking up and spinning your wheels, and they end at one of eight places, at each compass point. Explore the city, get to know the shortcuts, get to know the dodgy corners. Take every event as it comes. How to progress is entirely up to you. Fail an event? Start a new one that's around where you failed, or trek back if you want. But I liked Revenge! They've changed too much! Well then, no-one's stopping you playing Revenge. Some of the major features that you might miss are the lack of a Crash Mode and the lack of local multiplayer. But this is an entirely different game, and works as a whole very well. The open world setting also means that grand prix lap races have been axed, as well. Traffic Checking now works much better - instead of firing cars all over the road like a pinball machine, it'll now depend on your class of car a lot more. You can still send them careening in a 4X4 if you want, though. What you won't miss is Stryker, the obnoxious DJ wanker. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler You now have DJ Atomika, fresh from Radio BIG and slightly less obnoxious and wanky. No local multi? I had so much fun with my friends in Crash Mode! It does suck a little. But trust me, once you get stuck in, it won't matter at all. The philosophy behind Burnout Paradise was that you should never see a menu if at all possible, and never be removed from the gameplay. What little menus are required you can pull up with the d-pad, and you can hop straight into online without a hitch. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Unfortunately the nature of the open world means that it would be a massive drain on the system to have local multiplayer, and would mean that the locked 60 frames-per-second that is necessary for such a twitch-based game would have to be compromised. Crash Mode as it was in previous Burnouts doesn't fit this open-world, do anywhere setting. By its nature, it's very constrained. There is a replacement for both of these, though - Showtime, and a very robust set of online features. What else is new? There's a handbrake. Miss a turn in a vast city and you're suddenly lost. Hit the brake and scream round and you're suddenly back on track. Or if you want, just find another shortcut to the finish line. Or quit out of the event and find some parked cars, and Power Park into the space. Up to you. As well as Race and Road Rage, there are a few new events. Marked Man is a race from a junction to a finish point, and is kind of a mix between Road Rage and Race. You don't need to get there first, but you do need to get there - as unmarked black cars are all trying to ram you off the road. Get taken out too much and you fail. Survive to win. Stunt Run is best described as Tony Hawk in a car. It sounds awful, but the only thing that really affects this is the combo mechanic. After doing any type of stunt - a jump, a flat spin, a barrel roll, whatever - you'll get a multiplier and some points. Drifts and boosts will gain you points. Almost everything will gain you points. And you'll also get a 'timer pie' at the top of the screen. This gives you five seconds in which to do another stunt. Fail to do so and you lose your combo. Do so, and refill your timer pie and keep your combo going! Fail to get the requisite amount of points within the time limit and you fail. Fail. Showtime is the reimagining of Crash Mode for an open world that I mentioned earlier. Hit R1 and L1 together (or RB and LB) and you'll launch into the air, bouncing your car along the street. A dollar damage amount for hitting other cars and billboards, and multipliers for buses, as well as boost for multiples of 5 crashes. Run out of boost, show's over, and your total is calculated. Road Rules exist for every road in the game. They all have names and they can all be owned in two ways - a Showtime score beginning on that road, or the fastest time set on that road (a Time Road Rule). The game will automatically compare your scores to those of your friends and let you know if one of them beats your score. Beat a friend's score online in the same match, and you get to send a Mugshot to them, mocking them. Mugshots can be taken if you have an Xbox Live Vision Camera or a PS3-compatible USB camera (like the Playstation Eye). Get taken down by someone online? You've got three seconds to give them the finger before it takes a snapshot of you and it pops up on their screen. Great little feature and an opportunity to try on lots of pretty hats. Freeburn is new to Burnout. It sounds like what it is. Just open up your 'Easy Drive' menu, which pops up in the corner of your screen while you're driving around, and select 'Online Freeburn'. Bam. You're now in an online game with some other people. Yes, it's that seamless. You are driving around the same city, with the same level of detail, in the same place, with virtually no lag and no frame drops. Except you now have seven other people somewhere else in the city. It's very impressive. Now you're in Freeburn, try out some Freeburn challenges. There are fifty two-player challenges, fifty three-player ones, and so on, up to eight-player, for a total of 250 challenges. These range from 'Everyone get 200 yards of drift' to 'Jump over each other while barrel rolling' to 'Crash into each other while airborne over the broken bridge'. And it's a ton of fun. For completionists, there's a ton of collectibles. 500 gates, 200 billboards, and fifty jumps to find. Stuck on any of 'em? On PS3? Lob your save on a USB stick and use the Save Game Analyser, which will tell you where all the ones you need are located. And if that's not enough, there's eighty or so cars to collect - you'll see them boosting around the city like a maniac, and if you take 'em down, they're yours. Oh wait, there's more - each car has a different boost type. Aggression cars tend to be heavier and gain more boost from Oncoming and Traffic Checking (and can earn more boost in total), Stunt cars get more from... stunts, and Speed cars earn Boost like Stunt cars but can only use it once the boost is maxed out. Use all of a Speed car's boost in one go and you'll get a Burnout, and it'll refill part-way - all the way if you've done enough boost earning while losing the first lot. Keep doing this to get a Boost Chain and boost constantly. I want to get involved, and get up-to-the-minute info! Then check out the official website. They also have a podcast that they release every week or so, called Crash FM. Here's the RSS feed. Criterion also runs contests for game content - some of the new stuff coming soon is community-created. -- Didn't this come out already? Paradise has been out for a good while. You might already have completed it to 100% - or 101%. But on July 10th, the 'Cagney' update was released through PSN, and Xbox Live gets it on August 4th, which adds more stuff. On September 18th, the Davis Bike Pack will be launched. Which adds even more. Cagney: Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler I'm here to crash cars, not win Oscars! No, no. Cagney is the codename for Criterion's first substantial batch of DLC (what they call 'Game-Changing Content,' or GCC), out on PS3 and 360 right now. This adds a bunch more functionality to the game that was not available at release - for free! - Online Road Rage, Stunt Run, Marked Man - 70 New Freeburn Challenges, including time limits and challenges with multiple goals - At least two new vehicles (One very fast and heavy, but with no boost at all) - At least five new paint jobs for your car, including two created by members of the community - Rebalancing of ranked races - Custom Soundtrack support on PS3 - Bug fixes and improvements to the UI and certain behaviour balancing - Always recording Time Road Rules To get the update on PS3, simply pop the disc in while online. Your system will tell you there's an update available, and will download it. On 360, first go to Xbox Live Marketplace and download the Burnout Paradise Cagney Pack. Once it's completed, load up the game while online and it will prompt you for a Title Update. Once it's done you're good to go. Bike Pack (Davis) - September 18th: Night driving and crotch rockets! A full new single-player mode for motorcycles, with a male or female rider, including against-the-clock events and races. A fully customisable day/night cycle that traffic adheres to - if it's night, there's a lot less of it, and so on. If you want you can sync it to your system clock. Dynamic weather. Watch it on Dead Man's Edge on a rainy night. 70 Bike-specific Freeburn Challenges - bringing the total to 490. Did I mention that it's free? Kotaku have the official Criterion trailer here, Eastwood (expected Autumn/Fall 2008):Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler A new island to cruise around on! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yENL_Udt7gc Try before you buy The demo is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Network, but as of April 17th 2008 the online multiplayer mode is unavailable through the demo. You play with a Hunter Cavalry, the first car available in the game, through a series of events - a custom Burning Route for the demo, a race against AI cars, and a Stunt Run event. All of these events take place in a smaller section of the map than the full game, and contains a small amount of jumps, smashes, and billboards. If you get the Japanese demo you can drive the Nakamura Ikusa GT instead of the Cavalry, which handles slightly differently. I have the game, and I want to play with you guys! For Xbox Live, send a Friend Request to Burnout PA - it's checked daily. (NOTE: If you were on the previous PAburnout friends list, you will have an invite to the new one waiting in your inbox and you can delete PAburnout as this is no longer maintained. If you do not accept this invite by the time of Cagney's release then you will be removed from the list and will have to re-invite yourself.) This works by using the Friends of Friends feature - simply go to the Burnout PA list, select View Friends from the right-hand tab, and see who's playing from PA. If you are on PSN, send me (Willeth) a PM on the PA boards and I'll add you to the list below, which I'll fill out fully ASAP. Xbox Live: Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Forum name - Gamertag Lothars - LOTHAR71 urahonky - IMAPWNJ00 Willeth - Willeth PSN: Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Forum name - PSN ID Ah_Pook - Ah_Pook bficky - BFicky bigwah - Bigwah03 The Reverend Dr Galactus - RevDrGalactus The_Spaniard - Span_Wolf

Wait... they got rid of Crash mode!? Oh man noooooo! That is easily my favorite part about Burnout I suck at everything else. Oh well... These new updates sound pretty sweet. I'll have the game sometime next week, so you can add me: IMAPWNJ00 (00 = zeros). e: That sounded like I was hating on the game, but the main reason I like burnout is that it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It WANTS you to blow shit up and wreck around other people.

add me: IMAPWNJ00 (00 = zeros). Send an invite. And yeah, I was bummed about Crash dying too, but now I don't miss it at all. Not even the massive loading between each turn.

There was a gamertag PAburnout that was a collection of PA forumers, it probably still has room on it.

There was a gamertag PAburnout that was a collection of PA forumers, it probably still has room on it. It does, but I haven't seen smashism in a while and I wanted to get everything under one umbrella. If he's happy to continue maintaining it then forget about the new one, but my control freakery kinda took over here. This way at least we get people who'll be playing it for Cagney or who've bought it recently. EDIT: Just got a PM from smashism, he doesn't play any more, so we're going to use the new one from now on.

So I picked this up finally for 360, is anyone still playing?

I got it too, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet. I don't like how "open" the game is, believe it or not. It's kind of a pain to do races since you're not quite sure when to turn and whatnot (I know it tells you when, but I pay attention to the road more than anything). That and smashing the back of traffic now makes you crash, instead of knocking them ahead like in Revenge. That said, the game is beautiful and the driving is a little smoother.

this is the game i got when i got my ps3, and im still playing it like crack however many months later. just an incredibly great game, probably my 3rd favorite racing game ever at this point (after Burnout 3 and F-Zero GX you know). so yea... the new DLC is making me reaaaaaally excited. bikes! nighttime! online marked man! new island! custom soundtrack!! man... and its all free too, thats pretty incredible. so... if anyone wants to play some burnout online sometime my PSN is in my sig there.

So I picked this up finally for 360, is anyone still playing? Add yourself to Burnout PA and you can invite people or join people from that list. Once my 360's back from the shop (tomorrow, most likely) I'll be on. urahonky, it definitely pays to get to know the city. I'd jump online and do some challenges if I were you. Now, when an event says 'go to the waterfront' I know pretty much the best way to get to it from anywhere. I've never really used the compass or paid any attention to the blinking signs. Unfortunately it's most likely that the island will be paid, and bikes may well be too.

Yeah. That's my only thing about racing games -- learning. But I'll probably be playing it more this weekend. I do like being able to flip your car into traffic. That's always fun.

i was under the impression from somewhere or another that all the updates were supposed to be free, but now that im looking at it i dont really know where i got that from but i mean, i would totally pay for bikes and nighttime and a new island so i guess it doesnt matter much in the end

Criterion have been very vocal about how they want to keep expanding their game and make it as accessible as possible, but they've been very careful not to call it free. I'm amazed that, being published by EA, that they've managed to release this much content for free already. They must be under tremendous pressure to charge for it. One of the achievements even refers to new challenges as paid DLC.

looking through the complete changelog for the cagney update theres a bunch of neat little things going in, in addition to the excellent big stuff. some things that stuck out to me personally • Online cars now show damage - roll up to the start in a half-destroyed Hunter Cavalry and everyone else will see it! • 1080i support for "almost HD" sets - PS3 only

I got this last month I think played it solid for a week(actually mostly just aimless driving lol) then got a bit bored. I think its because I mostly have played racing games where I get to keep my car and upgrade that instead of just a new car buuut online was super fun

PSN The_Spaniard - Span_Wolf

Cagney's been delayed until July 14th for 360 users. Their podcast is going up today with details about their new calendar feature, which I will update the OP with once it's out.

lul360 Wait, I have the 360 version. fuck.

Lame. I've been waiting for this ever since it was announced.

Lame. I've been waiting for this ever since it was announced. And you're still going to get it. Also, Crash FM seems to be borked on the RSS feed. If anyone wants to grab the file of iTunes and wing it over to me before they get it fixed, I'd appreciate it.

I'll probably pick this up at the end of august. Or maybe I'll wait for the PC version in case someone mods in a decent GPS.

this is the game i got when i got my ps3, and im still playing it like crack however many months later. Same here, though it was only last month for me. These upcoming patches/content packs are like having a birthday less than a month after Christmas, then another in February and another in March.

I'll probably pick this up at the end of august. Or maybe I'll wait for the PC version in case someone mods in a decent GPS. It's still $20 in the Gamefly used store, if that helps. Also, their used games - by all accounts I've ever heard, including my own - are as clean or cleaner than most new games.

Sent a friend request to Burnout PA via my Live account "WorldClassHack". I'm surprised Cagney is coming out, actually. I almost had it pegged as one of those "over the rainbow" things that is perpetually on the horizon. Damage showing up in multiplayer, though? Sweet. Looking forward to it.

Just added the BurnoutPA to my live account. I'm RockinTheRedDog. I just picked this game up from Gamefly for only $17.99 and I can't stop playing this. They still have it up there if anyone wants to get it. Did anyone see on Kotaku that Burnout might introduce planes next?

Amazon has this for $26. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000MUXLOK/