Burnout Party!

54 weeks after its original release, and many awesome free content updates later, Burnout Paradise is still going strong. Yesterday saw the release of yet another free update, the biggest feature of which is the ability to instantly restart a failed event, a thing some drivers have been clamoring for from the beginning. Yesterday also brought something strange and different to Paradise City - premium downloadable content. Or as Criterion Games likes to call it, Game Changing Content.

The newest and most expensive addition to Paradise City is called the Burnout Party pack. Essentially, this is their version of an offline multiplayer. Don't get too excited though: you won't find any split screen here. Burnout's streamlined 60 fps gameplay makes that impossible to render twice at one time. Instead, they've developed a pass-the-controller series of challenges where up to 8 players must each complete a set task in order to score points in the round. Whoever performs best in each round gets the most points, and whoever has the most points at the end of all the rounds (up to 8), wins. You can have all this fun for the low low price of just $10.



If you didn't catch my sarcasm, this content is not worth $10. However, this is only the first of many awesome for-pay content downloads, including a new island. After all the hard work and time they put into free content updates, like online game modes, motorcycles, night/day, weather, I like to consider my $10 as spread out over all of that free content. Essentially the party pack is a donation to Criterion for the way more awesome content they've released previously. I don't know why they didn't make this Pary Pack one of the free updates last summer and then charged for Motorcycles. Surely they would've made more money.

Also, for your acheivement/trophy whores out there, the Burnout Party Pack comes with 7 new trophies, 4 silver and 3 bronze. And they are cake. Within 10 minutes of playing, I already had 6 of the 7 new ones, and the last one, though slightly time consuming, was just as easy. You can consider each bronze to be worth $0.91, and each silver to be worth $1.82. :p

In any case, I look forward to Burnout's future updates, including legendary cars like the Back to the Future DeLorean which will ACTUALLY hover, and the new Big Surf Island, where the entire island is designed for stunts, stunts, and more stunts. See you in Paradise City!