Another win for Burnout!  Two, in fact.



This year, we were nominated for 4 awards in IGN PS3's Best of 2008 round-up.

Burnout Paradise was shortlisted for Best Use of Sound or Best Online Multiplayer Game and WINNER of Best Driving Game and Best Aftermarket Support.

Best Driving Game is a HUGE prize, but we've worked hard this year to bring you the greatest support for a game through our Year of Paradise, so it's great to receive some recognition for that.

If you haven't joined the fun yet, there's never been a better time.  We'll be back next year with a load more awesome Burnout Paradise content!

According to IGN, you can "check back with us again on January 16, 2009 when we reveal our overall winners in addition to your picks for "Readers' Choice."

We'll be keeping our fingers crossed for then and also for the Xbox 360 Awards to be announced soon.

Have you ever been in a race where you think your doing really well only to see another car approaching the finish from a completely different direction? If you have then you are probably not making use of all those alternative routes and shortcuts.

To help you on your way to becoming a Paradise City master here is a list of four absolutely must use shortcuts.

Everyone knows about this one right? The Railway in the north of White Mountain

1. Exit for the Wind Farm
2. Exit for the Observatory along the dirt track, try and avoid the split ramps near here
3. Is where the driveable section of the railway ends.





This one is a bit trickier but really does save a lot of time if you are going to the Waterfront.

1. Cut the corner but watch out for the ramp
2. Follow the El-Train above to cut the next corner
3. Diagonally through the park
4. Into the building site then across Webster to the finish





If you are racing from Lone Peaks to the Baseball stadium then master these 2 jumps to make up any lost time.

1. After the Lone Peaks finish drive up the dirt track onto the railway. If you miss this you can still jump up from the Southbay Expressway, my favourite is the ramp just before the first Billboard.
2. You will see a Super Jump ramp over to the Interstate, DO NOT JUMP IT, instead drop off the railway a little bit further along.





It’s the same shortcut but going the other way, which makes it much harder. This is my favourite because you need to nail each stage.

1. Look for the large ramp on the pavement to the right. Use this to jump onto the Interstate.
2. You need to be in the oncoming lane so take the slip road down and then take the other slip road up.
3. Now you're in oncoming you look out for the gap in the barrier just before the large bridge. Drop down onto the railway here.
4. Don’t forget to leave the railway here otherwise this shortcut will cost you more time than you gained!





Happy Racing!

Big thanks to the guys who joined Matt and the Crash FM crew for this afternoon's podcast.

Here are some mugshots from the session...you'll find more on our Flickr site.












Hit the Crash FM link to pick up the latest.

This is it! Your chance to put your Paradise City knowledge to the test.

Here are the 3 final images for the Where in the World is MattW contest.

Pic 7




Pic 8




Pic 9




If you think you know where they are, just hit this link to go through to our contest entry form.

We'll call out the winners in next week's podcast and dish out some authentic Criterion prizes from Matt's desk!

Countdown to the podcast!




Matt and the crew will be recording this week's podcast at 4:00pm GMT - that's 45 minutes from now.

Hot topics will include this week's ranked racing, your awesome custom car liveries, some online racing with the team and more.

Hit the webcam link to watch the action as it takes place and look out for the podcast itself later in the day.

Hopefully Nevada's on standby to provide another video on the forum.

We can now bring you criteriongames.com's biggest stories live in Paradise!

To find News, just hit right on the d-pad to trigger the Easydrive menu and scroll all the way down to News.

If you check the game now, you'll see we're highlighting the Easter Weekend Racing. Here are a couple of shots to show how this looks in-game

Just wanted to post quickly to clarify what we're planning over this coming 4-day weekend.

We want to make it possible for some newcomers to break into a special Easter weekend-only top 10 movers leader board, so we’ll be tracking all weekend racing in Paradise.

Here's what you need to know:

1. Enter RANKED RACES (PS3) / RANKED MATCH (360) from the EasyDrive Menu (Unranked Races won't count).

2. Pick PLAY NOW (PS3) / QUICK MATCH (360) to take on players at a similar level of competition to you. Choose either of the other two options to challenge tougher competition.

3. Accrue rating points by finishing in as high a position as possible.

4. At the very start of Friday (00:00 AM GMT), we'll take a snapshot of the World Ratings. At 11:59 PM on Monday (PST), we'll check the scores again to see whose rating has INCREASED by the greatest number of points.

5. We'll publish a leader board at the end to show the final standings - that's the top 10 players with the most improved ranking points during this period only. There will be cool prizes for the winners!

Look out for MattF's post in a few minutes for the inside scoop on how to get ahead in rankings.

Happy racing...see you in Paradise!

Here's the second part of our competition - check out another 3 shots of Matt hiding in Paradise in the platinum PCPD.

If you missed yesterday's shots click here

Otherwise, here are today's tricky locations:

Pic 4





Pic 5





Pic 6





Thanks for those that noticed we were running an older version of the map - as you can see it's now bang up-to-date.




The final 3 shots and an entry form will appear among tomorrow's posts.

Happy hunting!

Hit this link for a superb interactive guide to everything in the game!

www.senocular.com/burnout





This is a truly awesome effort from our new friend Trevor at Senocular, who had this to say about it:

"I made the map because I thought it would be a fun project (for a game I love) and because I thought it would be nice to provide a useful tool to players.

"Not only does it help people more easily pin point locations in the city (like smashes which can be hard to identify in other maps), but it also can be a way to share paradise city locations with each other through a simple URL."

Now everyone can reach the magic 101%...

We love our top 10 gamers - these guys are the most awesome Burnout drivers, which is why you can see them there on the front page.

But you know what, it's pretty tough to break into that chart.

That's why for the more human among us, we're running an Easter weekend top 10 to see who can improve their points score the most over Easter weekend.

We'll take a snap-shot of everyone's scores at midnight GMT on Friday and stop the counter at midnight PST next Tuesday - that gives you 4 days of solid Burnout ranked racing.

We'll show the weekend leaderboard all week next week, so you can revel in your new-found fame and our top players on PS3 and 360 will each become the proud recipients of some exclusive Burnout memorabilia.