A couple of weeks ago in the midst of all sorts of Holiday games busy-ness, I attended a hotel penthouse suite event that showcased EA's big first-quarter 2008 games.
I was harried. I was tired. So I did not play "Railroad Simulator" for the PC (to be released 1/16/08). I saw it when the EA people were packing up, already loading a steamer trunk full of Xbox 360s and when I was busy talking to people about other things. I am sorry.
I was told that "Mercenaries 2" (Q1 2008; PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360) was similar to the E3 build I had played in July. I skipped it.
But I left pleased, because the game I had settled in with was "Burnout Paradise" (1/22/08; PS3, Xbox 360). It has quite a few things going for it.
"Burnout Paradise" isn't the first racing game set in a "Grand Theft Auto"-style open world. It's not the first racing game tuned for widespread online play. It's not, I hope you know, the first "Burnout" game. And yet there is buzz around this title, because it sits at the intersection of these trends. (Full disclosure: I contributed to the buzz, naming the game the best racing title I played at E3 in my Game Critics poll.)
What's special now is that this game newly breaks old rules. After five console "Burnout" games that encouraged players to break standard driving-game rules -- aim to get into crashes to gain more speed -- this sixth installment is designed to breach the double-yellow lines that typically divide modes of racing-game play. Online and offline modes, single-player and multi-player are merged in one lobby-free system (yes, "Test Drive: Unlimited" already started paving this path). The "Burnout" series' Racing and Crash modes are merged as well; the latter is now called Showtime for a reason the EA producer showing me the game could not explain. As reported here previously, a pull of the controller triggers activates (I'm still gonna call it…) Crash Mode and the player's car starts tumbling down the boulevards in semi-controllable slow-motion. Previous games' Crash Mode scoring icons are gone. This game asks only that you carom your car from oncoming vehicle to oncoming vehicle, as dollars of damage are tallied. To add a +1 to the multiplier of all the mayhem you're scoring, you have to hit a bus. Online friends can join to help with all the crushing.
Racing events, including a pursuit mode that puts black cars on your tail, are activated when you spin your wheels at any of the game city's stoplights ("over 120" of them, according to the official fact sheet). I shook these cars off pretty easily, but I was told that was a freak occurrence and that the chases should feel more intense, like those in "Need For Speed: Most Wanted."
The photo feature continues to impress. Attach a PlayStation or Xbox 360 camera to your "Burnout Paradise" console of choice, and it will snap pictures of the players a split second after a crash, saving about 2500 of the shots in a victory roll. That feature I knew about. What I didn't was the way you unlock cars in this game: you have to do a crash takedown of any vehicle you see on the road that you would like to drive. Once taken down, the car is in your garage. But it's a wreck. The first time you drive it, you'll have to roll it through a repair shop to make it pristine.
As for the other games at the EA event…
I didn't see "Army of Two" (Q1 2008; PS2/ Xbox 360) there but was told that the recently delayed title was being tweaked to accommodate some comments from the press. An excess of character chatter was being cut, among the fixes to help the title out.
I played enough of a demo of the first-person shooter "Battlefield: Bad Company" (2008; PS3, Xbox 360) to be able to report that the game will feature you as one of four soldiers, in a squad that continues the tradition of war fiction that includes a gruff black man called Sarge ("Aliens"? "Halo"? Etc.). The PC-borne series' trademark of enabling players to take control of any vehicle on the battlefield was promised but not shown in the demo's quick, tough forest village mission. The game's fact-sheet states that "environments are 90 percent destructible." While trees, chain link fences and exterior building walls will crumble under grenade fire, interior walls of buildings will not. This game didn't feel like "Battlefield" just yet -- and the fun body-hopping mechanic from the previous console "Battlefield" game is not in this new one -- but the nebulous release date suggests the developer may get more time to prove its product.
And there was one more EA game that I signed away my rights to talk about for several more days. Check back on December 5 for news on it.
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