Burnout Paradise Community Day Recap
Added 03/03/2008 by Justin McBride
Recently, EA sponsored a special event for various members of the gaming press to celebrate the recent launch of Burnout Paradise. I’ve been a Burnout fan ever since playing the demo of Burnout 3 (and subsequently buying the full game soon after) on the first Xbox and I’ve had a fair bit of quality time with both the Xbox Live demo and retail copy of the game. As soon as word of the event was passed on to me, I took a few seconds to consider it. This didn’t last very long at all and before I knew what was going on, I was on a plane, being whisked away to
Five uneventful hours later, the plane touched down and I disembarked, tired from the long flight but still highly enthused. After a rather interesting limo ride from the airport in which some petulant youth in a silver Honda Civic cut us off and the limo driver decided to return the favor, I arrived at the Sofitel Hotel with just enough time to check into the hotel, unpack my things, take a shower and watch a few minutes of television before going to sleep moments later.
The next morning, I awakened at 7:00 AM, scrambling around, making sure I had everything I needed (camera, wallet, cell phone, etc.) and promptly bolted downstairs to meet the 11 other journalists that had also accepted EA’s invitation in the lobby. The others weren’t hard to find as I heard someone mention “Burnout” as I checked my PDA. Shortly after, my EA contact, Andrew Green walked into the lobby to find us all and escort us to a private room for breakfast. Craig Sullivan, lead designer of Burnout Paradise joined us shortly after we’d taken our seats, just in time to order.
As I finished ordering the apple cinnamon pancakes, (which, by the way, are among the best I’ve ever had) the guy sitting next to me introduces himself as Hogan “Kam-Ra” Carter, one of the hosts over at Epileptic Gaming. I introduce myself as well and he asks me how I’m doing. “A bit nervous,” I said. “This is my first press event.” “Ah don’t worry about it man, it’ll be cool. These things are pretty great.” He said. How right he was.
Breakfast over; we began the short walk to the EA Redwood Shores campus. Within a few short minutes, I take my first steps into EA’s I take a moment to drink all of it in, gazing around like a young child on their first trip to
We walked into a small room to our right, seeing that a demonstration area had been set up, running Army of Two. I quickly sat down and participated in a quick two on two multiplayer match with three of my fellow journalists. After I’d played my fill, I was invited to interview Assistant Producer, Matt Turner in which we delved further into the game, talking about multiplayer modes, the campaign and several features.
Following our Army of Two session, we were guided on a quick tour around the campus. I once again walked in a sort of awe as we were walked down a hallway lined with all of the gold and platinum plaques EA had earned throughout the years from its best selling titles. Another hallway that was particularly striking was one in which a mural comprised of all of the cover art from each and every game EA had published, from their beginnings in the early eighties up until now. It was quite the amazing sight, seeing all of the systems EA published for, from the Apple II and Commodore 64 to the Xbox 360 of today.
As the tour concluded, we were guided upstairs to a small room labeled “Vacant”, inside, waited a dozen Xbox 360 consoles running Burnout Paradise on high definition monitors. It seemed it was time for us to play the game of the hour, Burnout Paradise. I took a seat at my station, putting on the headset that lay in front of me and picked up the controller. Needless to say, I was ready to roll.
The racing genre has long since been one of my favorites and the Burnout series high on my list of best racing games and the latest entry in the series is no exception. I dove headfirst into the open world of
A short while into our session, I was offered a one on one interview with Craig Sullivan. Digital voice recorder and notebook in hand, I grabbed this opportunity by the horns and thoroughly picked his brain. If anything, I can say the interview went as well as I’d hoped, and as I returned to the room to resume the session, I swelled with pride.
(Interview can be found here)
Soon after, we were told of the Burnout Millionaire’s Club challenge, in which the goal was to score over a million points on a single stunt run. Those of us with the skills to succeed would receive a special T-shirt emblazoned with the Millionaire’s Club logo to commemorate their victory. As a further incentive, we were told that only twenty of the shirts would ever be made. Concluding my final stunt run with a spectacular crash, I succeeded, with a score of about 1.1 million. My picture was taken, along with the remaining three or so among us who prevailed, for future use on Criterion’s website.
Following the Millionaire’s Cub challenge, the twelve of us were split into two teams. We were presented with a simple challenge. Whichever team could complete 25 of the 300+ multiplayer challenges won. Unfortunately, my team lost the event but I had fun all the while, racing around the city completing such challenges as performing a full barrel roll and driving into oncoming traffic for a certain distance. It certainly made for one fun and involving multiplayer mode, as my team and I were constantly shouting directions to the next challenge back and forth as we worked together to complete the many challenges.
By this time, several hours of Burnout had been played, consisting of dozens of crashes, several high speed jumps and tens of millions of dollars worth of property damage done in the always entertaining Showtime mode. As I walked back to the hotel alongside the other journalists to relax for a while before dinner later that night, Hogan asked, “Not bad for your first press event eh?”
“Not bad,” I replied with a smirk. “Not bad at all.”
