EA Studio Showcase: Burnout Paradise

Wed, Aug 20, 2008

At last week's EA Studio Showcase, GameCyte had the opportunity to sit down and try out the impending update to Burnout Paradise by Criterion Games. With EA's Kevin O'Leary acting as our helpful GPS navigator, we were able to sit down and get some extended hands-on play with the game's new motorcycles, and get answers to several of our burning Burnout questions. Honestly, I think the best feature of the demo was when I caught my fellow editor doing donuts in the middle of the road and t-boned him into oblivion, but that doesn't mean the rest of the game wasn't also plenty of fun. Our preview impressions and inquiries are after the jump.

If you're not quite up to speed, Burnout Paradise was released back in January to broad critical acclaim, bringing quite a lot of change to the long-running Burnout franchise. The game stepped away from fixed tracks and pre-defined event progression, instead dropping players into the open world of Paradise City, adding just a touch of sandbox to the blindingly fast, spectacularly destructive, reckless driving formula we had come to love. Paradise also placed a much greater emphasis on online multiplayer, including an extremely thorough drop-in/drop-out system for full race events and impromptu "Freeburn" challenges.

With a solid game on their hands, EA and Criterion could have called it a day, but it seems the developers were not content to cash out, as the saying goes. Criterion outlined the "Year of Paradise:" Plans to add a wealth of new vehicles, gameplay options, and even locations to the game through a series of patches. The Cagney update went live in July and August for the PS3 and 360, respectively, adding several new challenges and modes to Paradise, primarily aimed at online play. The next update, formerly known as Davis, is set to arrive in early September, and will bring a brand-new addition to the Burnout series: Motorcycles. As such, Criterion has simply dubbed it "Burnout Bikes."

Controller in hand, I was allowed to take one such bike through the streets of Paradise City. The feel of the bike was as different as one would expect, as compared to a car: tighter controls, quicker acceleration, a lighter weight and an increased tendency to crash. Obviously, the sensation wasn't 100% realistic, but this wasn't Gran Turismo -- the new motorcycle gameplay felt just right for a Burnout take on crotch rockets. Quickly getting used to the new handling, I began to zip up and down the various roads, accompanied by the usual Burnout Paradise trappings, including instantly-appearing Road Rules challenges, and civilian traffic which always seemed poised to turn your awesome run into a devastating wreck.

This latter feature, I learned, would be heavily affected by another addition from the Bikes update. Criterion has added a dynamic day/night cycle to the game, allowing players to race after dark on sparsely-populated streets and compete in night-specific challenges. Indeed, there will be plenty of new challenges both at night and during the day -- Burnout Bikes promises to provide an all-new motorcycle license to the game, allowing players to work through a series of single-player tasks to upgrade said license and unlock all of the new content. In addition, 70 bike-specific Freeburn challenges will be included in the update, adding a healthy dose of online gameplay for Burnout bikers. And, lest we forget to mention it -- all of these features, which are estimated to add roughly 10 hours of gameplay to an already solid title, are completely free of charge.

As excited as we were to be receiving all of these new additions, as we continued playing, it dawned on us that they might have been tempered with a few subtractions, as well. Riding around on my shiny new bike was very enjoyable, but after a minute, it dawned on me that something was missing. "Where's the boost?" I asked, wondering if I'd simply forgotten how to activate it. Kevin replied that motorcycles simply do not have Burnout's usual turbo boost. I was prepared to cry foul, but Kevin pointed out to me that the motorcycles were already racing down the streets at extremely high velocity, matching the cars' turbo speeds without using boost at all. True, one can't use a sudden boost to try and pull ahead, but the trade-off is that you're going that fast all the time.

As I pondered this balance, my mind drifted off of the road, and I plowed my motorcycle directly into oncoming traffic. I braced for one of Burnout's iconic crashes, expecting a cinematic display of flying wreckage and twisted shrapnel. Instead, my bike anticlimactically slid a short distance along the road, absent of its driver, grinding to a halt against the highway barrier. I looked in disbelief at Mr. O'Leary. "No over-the-top crashes? Isn't that Burnout sacrilege?" His simple answer told the entire story: "Well, the game is rated E10+." He didn't have to explain further -- it's one thing for faceless vehicles to go spiraling through the air in a sea of shattered glass and metal, but the new motorcycles have visible drivers. It's significantly less child-friendly to portray a person being flung into hospitalizing injuries and fatal situations in Burnout's usual detailed style. Needless to say, a new patch which invalidated the game's current ESRB rating would be a significant headache for everyone.

Fair enough; there'll be no boost, and extremely mild crashes. Still, Burnout Paradise will let you experience an all new way to engage in the series' high-speed races, right? Well... sort of. Once we were used to the bikes, we asked Kevin if we might try out a formal in-game race, only to learn that no such races were being included. We were aghast -- Burnout without races? What game were we playing, here? Kevin explained to us that while the new Bikes pack would be including plenty of new single and multi-player challenges, standard races simply weren't in high demand.

"With Bikes, we actually aren't doing races," Kevin told us. "That's because we're building the game -- changing the game -- based on players' feedback and stuff like that. Our numbers show us that the vastly overwhelming number of players are only doing Freeburn challenges, and a very small percentage are doing hardcore races. So we've decided to continue to give players what they want; give them more Freeburn challenges because they're just eating through them. There's a huge number of players who have actually completed every Freeburn challenge, and at this point and date there are 420 of them."

With that in mind, Kevin prompted us to try a few of the game's new bike-specific Freeburns. Setting up the challenges was as simple as ever, allowing the host to start up a quick objective from a list, and soon we were attempting tasks like maintaining wheelies for a specified distance, or completing certain jumps, or driving along certain roads without crashing. There was also an incident involving donuts and an unprovoked t-bone, which was really more fun than expected. Our sample was only a small fraction of the promised 70 Freeburn additions, but based on our experience, the new content is recognizable to Freeburn pros, while still geared towards exploring the new bike features.

In the end, it's important to point out that while a few features might seem to be missing for long-time Burnout devotees, it's not like Criterion is removing any of these options in the update. If boosting and crashing and plain vanilla racing are your cup of tea, you'll still have all of the cars and their related challenges to play. But, if you're looking for a new way to take a spin around Paradise City, you'll get to experience the new gameplay and challenges that the bikes will provide. The bikes grew on me pretty quickly, and I'm of the opinion most Paradise players will welcome this update. Still, even if you don't like it, you've lost nothing but a short wait for your free download.