New Burnout Paradise Pack Revealed

When it was released earlier last year, Burnout Paradise set a new standard of vehicular mayhem, and Criterion Games increased the car carnage by supporting the game with additional content. According to Criterion's website, on February 6, the two latest packs for the game will be released to further improve the racing (and crashing) experience. The first pack is known as the Party Pack, and will allow you and up to seven other friends to play through stunt, speed and skill challenges to see who's the best racer in your group. Stunt challenges will involve jumps and tricks, while Speed challenges have quick time trials and time tests and Skill Challenges focus on racing through oncoming traffic and drifting. The Party Pack will be a premium pack, although no price was revealed on the website.

The second pack will be free, and will feature a large number of adjustments. The first is the inclusion of a Burnout Paradise Store, which will allow players to purchase any of the upcoming content for the game without having to back out of the game itself. This will include items like the Legendary Cars or Island packs when they become available.

Vehicles will receive a significant overhaul, making the handling on the earliest cars more accessible and easier to Burnout newcomers. This means these earlier cars will be harder to crash and harder to spin out, but will operate at a slower pace. What's more, players will be able to evaluate the cars that they have in the Junkyard, making it easier to choose the right car based on its stats. Cars will also naturally right themselves in the midst of a barrel roll if you hit a split ramp. The Stunt Run Timer has been adjusted to run slower, while the difficulty of all events in the game has been modified to take the new car speeds into effect.

Road Rage has received an overhaul, removing the time that's added whenever you hit the target number of cars. That will make it much harder for people to exploit the mode to rack up larger scores. Objects that you can interact with in the Burnout world have been redesigned, so Billboards will show up as Red, Smashes will be yellow and Super Jumps will be blue. These objects will also pulse, which should help you discover where they are and take advantage of them in the game.

Finally, a long awaited change is the inclusion of restarting an event. Previously, there was no way to immediately restart a race or event, forcing you to start all over from the beginning. That could be extremely inconvenient, especially if you'd made a mistake halfway across a city spanning race. Now, you no longer have to drive all the way back to the starting location. Instead, you'll instantly warp back to the start and leap back into the race. Finally, PS3 and PC players will discover an exclusive feature: an in-game browser that is designed to bring a new feature to the game known as the Criterion Games Network, which will be explained by Criterion Games next week.

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