CRITERION GAMES

Previews

This is truly open world racing done right, running at a blistering 60 frames per second and spit polished within an inch of its life to boot.

The most high-octane racing series this side of the Mississippi (and the other side as well) is just about set to hit the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January...

We recently had an opportunity to spend several hours with the PS3 version of said demo, and we're pleased to report that it bodes well for the finished game.

I recently got sucked into Burnout Paradise, playing about a half-hour of the racing game due for release this Winter. While a half-hour may not seem like much, at hands-on gaming events, we writers rarely have the time or interest to play more than about fifteen minutes of a title before moving to the next...

When the game was announced there was some scepticism over whether Criterion would be able to translate the thrilling gameplay over to an open city, but after seeing a full demo of the game in action those concerns are a distant memory.

TeamXbox gets a hands-on look at the latest in the Burnout series.

We get a load of Criterion's ripping new installment in the Burnout series, as well as check out offline and online gameplay.

We managed to get our hands on a build of the game that was said to be nearly finished. Its overall polish and blistering framerate was evidence of this. Running at a solid 60fps, the game is just as fast and smooth as ever, which has always been one of the hallmarks and reasons for success of the series...

Gone are the linear tracks and tiered level structure; Burnout Paradise takes place in one enormous city that's open from the start and never stops to load. And lest you fret, the game still blazes by at 60 frames a second, the buttery-smooth visuals complemented by cars that crumple more convincingly than ever. The series is still about viscerally destructive driving, and the audio-visual impact of hitting a wall at 200 m.p.h. is as "next-gen" as anything we've experienced.

The game made a splashy showing at this year's E3 and our positive impressions of the speedy, gorgeous racer haven't really changed...

Everything we want out of a Burnout game is in as well as a bunch of smart, fun enhancements to the experience that only add to its appeal. Fans of the series and anyone looking for tight online experience that supports smack talk and bragging with photos would do well to keep an eye out for Burnout Paradise when it ships this winter for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Paradise doesn't look like being a revolution for Burnout, more of a liberation. Yes, the crashes are stunning, but there's more to Paradise than mere visual impact.

Details aside, as they sadly have to be, the constituent parts of the Burnout experience that culminate in those brilliantly replayable smash frenzies are certainly in place. Visually and aurally, this is Burnout dragged kicking and screaming and apes-in-pain into a new era.

Your car is going to get messed up. If there was one thing to take away from Matt Webster's presentation of Burnout Paradise -- that is beyond all the street names, easy D-Pad online system and snapshot photos that they rehashed from E3 -- it's that your car is going to get screwed up in this game, and you're going to love it.

Best Racing Game: Burnout Paradise
This year's Game Critics judges represented the following esteemed media outlets:
USA Today, Newsweek, TIME Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Wired Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Game Informer, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Gamepro, PC Gamer, Games for Windows, Play Magazine, Official Xbox Magazine, Popular Science, PSM Magazine, Business 2.0, MTV, 1UP.com, GameSpot, GameSpy, IGN.com, Kotaku, GamesRadar, Hollywood Reporter, Comcast Game Invasion, GameDaily, Yahoo! Video Games, G4TV, The Electric Playground, UGO.com, GameTrailers.com, Gannett News Service.

Best Racing Game: Burnout Paradise
With its interesting new take on open-world racing, Burnout Paradise is already looking super-impressive. Just imagine the fast-paced, over-the-top racing you know from the past games unleashed on an open-ended world. That should give you a good idea of what to expect from Burnout Paradise.

Best Racing Game: Burnout Paradise
These guys know how to **** stuff up really, really well.

Best Racing Game: Burnout Paradise
Whether you enjoy your racing on a track, through busy city streets, or muddy back-roads, our number one pick is sure to keep you floored...

Burnout Paradise nominated for Best Racing and Best Online Multiplayer.

Best Racing Game: Burnout Paradise
Open-world, wreck-filled, cleverly featured hardware-pushing racing—with a crash mode redesigned to play like a combination of "Katamari Damacy" and "Madden." Demoed at E3 on the PS3.

Best Online Multiplayer Game: Burnout Paradise
The game has innovative open-world active multiplayer modes, an inspired passive multiplayer feature that constantly logs the best performances on each of the game's city streets—and lets everyone on a friends list know how they compare—and it snaps embarrassing photos of your online victims.

Visually, this is without a doubt the best looking Burnout to date, and really takes good advantage of the power available in the Xbox 360 and PS3. Aside from the beautiful environments and lighting effects, this is by far the most destructible entry into the franchise. The vehicle deformations and crash debris after a major impact are a sight to behold, in slow motion you'll see the cars wrap around telephone poles like you'd expect, while glass and shards of steel litter the air.

...even though it was hidden away in a single demo station at the airport hangar, I think Burnout Paradise is one of the most impressive games I saw this year. Collisions and crashes are more photorealistic than ever, natch. But what blew me away was the 30 sq. mile city that you and seven other players are free to roam through, encountering races and challenges in a very organic fashion. Promising, to say the least.

Our trip down to Paradise City was brief, but we came away impressed by the new direction displayed in Burnout Paradise. It is a Burnout game through and through, complete with the aggression, intensity, and superb handling the series is known for, yet the innovations and additions look to take Paradise to an entirely new stratosphere.

The fast-moving Burnout series is crashing its way around a much larger area in Burnout Paradise. And the resulting product, which is still in a pre-alpha state, is already looking like it could end up being a pretty amazing game.

Burnout is changing—majorly. The simplistic racing game with the crashes is becoming something much more ambitious this time around: Burnout Paradise. Set in Paradise City, a fictional burg you can explore freely at your leisure, the game keeps hold of the high-speed racing and brutal crashing of the predecessors while adding crunchy new next generation technology to make it worth it.

It's good to see that Criterion isn't just jamming Burnout into an open-world environment and calling it a day. They've certainly made it clear that it's important that it plays and feels like the Burnout that fans know and love, while expanding its scope exponentially. Ultimately, isn't it really about smashing cars up real good?

I'm not a huge racing game fan, and that's probably why I like Burnout so much. The series has feels more like an action game than any car game I've ever played.

The world was huge, and it featured no pop-up or draw-in of any kind. Best of all, the sense of speed continues to rock, meanwhile the framerate was silky smooth. The cars controlled well, and driving around took no time getting used to. I even made a note on my pad that states: "plays like a dream". Indeed Burnout does play superb. Burnout fans will not be disappointed with this one, it's awesome.

"Holy crap the muscle cars in Burnout Paradise are loud."

That's the first thing that popped to mind when Criterion's Alex Ward fired up the E3 build of his team's latest racer for the first time...

It's a sprawling metropolis of industry and commercialism and entertainment, tangled up in 90 miles of wheel-melting asphalt. It's a haven of interwoven pathways; of heart-stopping jumps at unfathomable speeds through unbelievable obstacles. It's a world tailor-made for racing and crashing, built from the ground up to steer the genre's most explosive franchise to the top of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hit lists. This is Burnout 5: Criterion Games' latest and greatest ultra-speed destruction derby.