Burnout Paradise was the game I was looking most forward to playing right next to Army of Two this past week. I missed my chance at getting my hands on it during E3 so I was extremely happy that I had another shot at it. Not only that, but some of the lead developers from the game also showed off a few neat things to the press before we could get some play time.

Hit the jump for my unfortunately short report on Burnout Paradise. 

First off, Burnout Paradise was made from the ground up. They didn't take anything from the previous games at all for Paradise. They've also changed how the game will be play like now. For instance, everything on the map is already opened up -- no need to unlock anything. You can go anywhere you want to at any time and participate in any race or event. Also, the map will be huge (think in terms of Test Drive Unlimited huge).

The folks representing Criterion got up on stage and showed a new feature where by pressing the D-pad you can get a hold of your buddies and challenge them to an event or race. As soon as they set up an event, a challenger jumped in and you can see him trying to approach you on the map. They both got to a starting position and race up a long and curvy hill and then each took a turn at the barrel jump event. An example of that is in the first few seconds of this video:  

Now I'd love to be able to tell you how the races and event modes were, but when Tristero and I finally got our hands on the game, the network crashed. So we could only race around by ourselves and crash into random objects. We couldn't even try out the Live Vision and Eye Toy features. Apparently, when your buddy forces you into a crash, the cameras will take a quick snapshot of you and send that too all of the people who you are currently racing with.  

I played for about ten minutes on the PS3 and Xbox 360 version and I can only say that the controls are very solid and the graphics are spectacular. Simply put, Burnout fans will not be disappointed.