The game was demoed at EA’s press conference earlier today, and will include a whole bunch of new features that Burnout players will be familiar with. If there’s one thing Criterion is good at, it’s community. The game will also have two complete campaigns, one played as a racer and one as a cop. The familiar community features are all there and the trailer detailed some possible power ups (a spike strip was shown).

I loved Burnout Paradise, so consider me excited for this one.

Of course info like this is subject to change, but it looks like we can look forward to EA Sports MMA and Crysis 2 sometime between the October and December. Alongside these come a, yet to be officially announced, console version of Sims 3, a new Need For Speed (the Criterion one, perhaps?) and another addition to the laundry list of Harry Potter games.

Well folks, it’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. Criterion announced Big Surf Island a while ago and as the months have ticked away Burnout players have slowly seen that bridge reaching out from Paradise City and now they can finally cross it. Is the grass greener on the other side or does it have more in common with car crash TV? Why don’t you hit the jump and find out.

Big Surf Island is the largest piece of downloadable content to be released for Burnout Paradise yet and something that I have been waiting for for some time. The idea of having a whole new area to drive around and explore was something that I really couldn’t wait to do and the reason that i’m doing this review.

The first thing you’ll notice about BSI is that it’s quite a bit different to the original city. There’s a lot off off road areas for you to explore and, although at street level it might feel similar, there is a lot of little things that make this piece of content something that all Burnout players need to own. Like I said, BSI has enough differences to make this a great piece of content for those who love Burnout. The off road stuff is really cool and offers something that was rarely seen within the boundaries Paradise City. The biggest difference I found was the ammount of vertical areas that can be found here. Sure, there was a few building to building jumps in the original game, but here it seems that the rooftops can be explored for some time before coming to an end. This is something that was a little odd to me at first, but it’s something that I really like and something that offers a whole new type of Burnout experience.

Also added in here is a new game mode called Island Tour. Basicaly this mode is similar to a Burning Route and has you race around the city hitting checkpoints and getting to the finish within a certain time. Whilst it’s a nice inclusion, it certainly wasn’t nessecary but does help add some variety to the game, even if it is just a little bit. Alongside this ‘new’ mode all the regular modes are here which need to be finished to complete your new Island Lisence.

As with almost all of the other packs you also get some new cars, which, once again, wasn’t nessecary but is definiely a nice inclusion for Burnout fans. When you make your start in Big Surf Island your given the Dust Storm, a really cool dune buggy type car. I found that this car is pretty much key to suceeding on the island, but I definitely recomend unlocking it’s big brother, the Dust Storm Superturbo, as soon as possible. Alongside those two there’s a further seven cars that can be unlocked, including a toy version of the Jansen 88 Special (AKA the Delorean). That said, these unlocks don’t replace the original Legendary car pack.

Overall, I feel that this is the best piece of downloadable content released for Burnout: Paradise to date. For fans of Burnout this is something I whole heartedly recomend, it adds just the right ammount of the good stuff to warrant the purchase and really does nothing wrong. The only problem I found was that the island was a little smaller than I expected, that said it’s jam packed with stuff to do and is probably the best value piece of content for the game to date.

9.2/10

Secondary Comments – By Chris Malley

I’m a massive fan of Burnout Paradise, anyone who adds me on PSN will know this. In fact, for a while, it was all I played. No i’m not an ultra completist saddo, I really do love this game and what Criterion have done. I was, like all other Burnout fans, really looking forward to the Big Surf Island content and, thankfully, I wasn’t disapointed. Like Anthony said, the content adds a whole new, almost completely different, area to explore and adds a whole new layer to the gameplay. Not only are you driving along the road, crashing your car and hitting ramps, now you’re scaling car parks, driving on rooves before falling to the earth for close to thirty seconds. All I could think whilst playing this is, this is awesome. Anyone who owns Burnout Paradise needs to buy this and anyone who doesn’t go get it…now. As a wonderful side note, i’d like to mention the ammount of British pop culture references that Criterion included here, sure to amuse the UK fans and bemuse those who don’t get them. The Inspiral Car Park is a work of simple comedic genius. Well done guys.

So here we have it folks, TPSN’s fifth review of the week, and this one, as you might have read, is a “mega” one. That’s right, due to the sheer amount of DLC released by Criterion for Burnout Paradise I decided it’d be better if we combined the lot of it into one massive review. Of course each piece will get it’s own score, I just thought a one stop shop for Burnout reviews would be better than a ton of separate reviews. Ok then let’s get to it.

[After some deliberation I feel that it seems needless to score anything that does not add anything new, content-wise, to the game. I feel that it would be unfair to score a downloadable car pack and place that alongside scores of game changing content such as the Party Pack and Cops & Robbers modes. I hope that you respect my decision to do this]

Party Pack

The first piece of paid-for downloadable content for Burnout Paradise was the Party Pack. One of the biggest omissions from this edition of Burnout for fans of the series was the ‘pass the controller’ game modes. This is where the Party Pack comes in.

Now players can play 1-8 player local multiplayer and compete in a variety of challenges to see who’s the best and who gets the bragging rights in your circle of friends. The amount of modes available to the player is pretty vast and does help spice up the gameplay quite a lot and make for some interesting battles between you and your mates.

One of the things that has held this pack back from being the pinacle of content for fans is that Crash Mode has still been left out. Of course, this isn’t a slight on the pack but it might have justified it’s price tag had it been in there.

Overall this doesn’t really add a lot to the game. Of course, if you’ve got a lot of hardcore Burnout playing friends then it’s hard to resist but for most people it’s one to leave by the wayside.

6.5/10

Legendary Cars Pack

Additional content packs often seem arbitrary in many games and something that don’t change up the gameplay whatsoever. For the most part this can be said for the Legendary Cars pack. A lot of the cars really don’t do anything apart from add some new cars with old school movie connotations. There’s ‘kock off’s’ of all of you’re favourite movie cars including the General Lee (Duke’s Of Hazard), KIT (Night Rider) and Ecto-1 (Ghostbusters) sure these are all cool and must have’s for fans but it’s the Jansen 88 special that really changes up the game.

The Jansen (A.K.A. Delorean) is the one that changes up the gameplay the most, by offering a car that flies. Well, ok it hovers, but it definitely adds enough of a change to the game for people to pick up the pack (or at least this one car).

For fans of the movies/TV shows these cars are a must have and definitely add some cool stuff to the game, just not enough stuff to make this pack a must have.

Toy Cars Pack

Like the Legendary Cars and, the upcoming, Boost Specials car packs these too are not nessecary to the whole Burnout experience. Sure, they’re a bunch of ‘new’ vehicles, but it isn’t a substantial piece of content that really changes the game. Yeah, your car/bike might be small and, for a while, that’s quite a novelty but it does get really old quite fast. Unlike the other packs they don’t add anything new to the game and are simply scaled down versions of cars already included in the game. There’s not much else to say really. If you want to turn Paradise City into the land of Micro Machines then this is the perfect pack for you. Otherwise it seems to be reserved for kids, completists and trophy whores.

Boost Specials Pack

Another arbitrary car pack here. There’s only two cars in this pack and, although they’re pretty good I think the pricing was a little off on these. The cars look cool and do offer something different in terms of gameplay, but I think these are reserved for the ‘proper hardcore’ Burnout fans. The cars look nice and do have some really cool things in terms of boost, but that’s about it.

Cops And Robbers Pack

The second piece of, what I would call, “game changing” content for Burnout Paradise is the Cops and Robbers mode. The online centric mode fits perfectly into the Burnout universe and I for one am surprised that Criterion didn’t include this from the start.

On a basic level, it’s capture the flag with cars. Each team is set the task of moving a stack of gold bricks to either the police station (Cops) or a safehouse (Robbers) before the other team does. It sounds simple, but Criterion have included some really cool, simple, yet inventive elements in order to make this an experience players will keep wanting to come back to.

The basic rules are simple, but the game has definitely been adapted to make sure everything is fair for both sides. Each team is assigned the same car (skinned in blue and white for the Cops team) which definitely evens up the playing field. It definitely wouldb’t work if the cops were in F1 Cars and the robbers were stuck with busted up old vans. The second important thing I noticed was that whichever player is currently holding the gold is slowed down due to it’s weight. This makes for an interesting team work mechanic (unintentional pun, I assure you) where players must guard the player holding the gold to try and stop them from taking down the carrier and escaping with it themselves. All of this makes for really interesting car-based mayhem all set in Paradise City.

Not only do you get the new mode, but with this pack comes 33 ‘new’ cars. Well they’re not exactly new, they’re just re-skins of some of the game’s best cars with a few added flashing lights. They’re not exactly something special, but are a nice touch nonetheless.

Overall the pack is good. The cops and robbers mode is  blast online and the addition of those new cars definitely adds a little more variety to your Burnout Junk Yard. The only thing I feel is missing, is the ability to play the mode offline. I realise that it’s hard to make such a team centric mode work in local multiplayer but the option would’ve been nice. Even against the AI the mode would’ve been quite cool. That aside this is, by far, the best Burnout content pack to date and is definitely worth the price tag in comparison to some of those others.

9/10

I hope that this “Mega Review” was good enough and let you guys out there know the ins and out of the Burnout Paradise content. With the latest pack, Big Surf Island, coming on June 11th you’d better watch out for that review fairly soon.

Criterion have released a new trailer showing off their latest piece of DLC for Burnout Paradise, Big Surf Island.

Not only does the trailer (on here courtesy of Joystiq) show off some of the, rather cool, environments that you’ll be able to race, fip and crash your way around it also reveals the release date. Go ahead, give it a watch if you want to find out.

No pricing on this as of yet, but i’d expect it to be more than usual considering how large the content is.

I’m sure the PCPD themselves would appeal of this kind of steal. Criterion have announced the pricing for their next piece of downloadable content, the ‘Cops & Robbers’ pack is arriving on Thursday and, like I said, it’s a steal.

The new conent weighs in at a pretty nice price of $9.99 (about £7.99) and has a ton of new content to give Burnout fans.

It adds the ‘Cops & Robbers’ CTF-style mode as well as 33, yes 33, new international cop cars that will be added to your junkyard. All that for $10, I told you this was a steal and is much better value than Criterions other paid DLC ventures.

With the price finally sorted, let’s hope this carries over to Big Surf Island.

Just as a reminder, we do have a feature coming up about all of the content coming out of Criterion for Burnout which should be coming up in the next week or so.

Criterion have announced the release date for their next piece of downloadable content for Burnout: Paradise.

The Cops & Robbers DLC will be released on April 30th. The ammount of DLC Criterion have released for this game far surpasses that of many other games on the market and when you look at the quality of said content it’s surprising the guys can get the stuff out on time.

We’ve no word on the pricing just yet but EA say we should hear something “soon”.

Remember the ‘Cops & Robbers’ DLC that was announced for Burnout: Paradise a few months back? Of course you don’t, that;s what i’m here for. Ok then, maybe a few of your Burnout nuts out there remember it and it looks like one of the coolest pieces of DLC released for the game yet.

Anyway, Criterion have announced that it will bring a total of eight new trophies to the game. It’s always nice to see additions to the trophy lists. Saying that, upon comparing my trophies the addition of these makes my overall percentage go down [instert PacMan death noise here]. Either way, nice going Criterion this mode looks pretty cool and I can’t wait for it.

No idea on a release date yet, but with this announcement I’m thinking sooner rather than later.

We’ve been on a little bit of a ‘review hiatus’ for a while now. They’ll be back soon enough with reviews of some really cool stuff. Just you wait.

Criterion made the announcement yesterday that the ‘Boost Specials’ car pack would be coming to a download service near you this Thursday.

The pack contains two cars, the Hawker Mech and the Carson Extreme Hotrod. Both cars will be priced at $3 each, but a pack will be available for $5.

The cars will be available on the PlayStation Store on Thursday. Are you getting ‘em?

Criterion have announced that the third piece of Burnout: Paradise downloadable content, the ‘Toy Car’ pack, will be released this coming Thursday on the PlayStation Store.

Although Criterion have announced no formal pricing it’s pretty likely that the prices will be similar to those released durning the ‘accidental’ Xbox Live listing.For those who want the whole bundle it’s going to be around £10 and £1.50 per vehicle, excluding the Nakamura toy bike which will be probably going for £2+

Hopefully this will be cleared up soon. We need proper details Criterion.