(Below is the beginning of my latest GameFile column. For the full thing, check out MTVNews.com)
My video game January is not like anyone else's video game January anywhere on the planet. And to prove it, all I need to do is look at the map and find Chubb Lane.
Chubb Lane is a stretch of road in "Burnout Paradise," the open-world racing game that is coming out January 22. The game's publisher, Electronic Arts, sent me an early copy of the finished game last week. It was in a box, in shrink-wrap. I popped it into my PS3, made sure that my console was hooked up to the Internet so that all my records would be saved onto the worldwide leader boards, and I started driving.
I think it was on Friday when I drove over to Chubb Lane on the western half of Paradise City. I drove from one end of the road to the other in 52.10 seconds. Then I activated the "Burnout" Showtime mode, which sent my car hurtling through traffic, racking up points, in dollars, for the amount of damage I caused: $2,647,250 to be exact. My speed and damage performances were new world records. More oddly, they were original world records, displacing ... nothing. I set them first, as if I were Neil Armstrong setting the long-jump mark on the moon. And several days later I still have the records. I think that's because no one else is driving on Chubb Lane. Not yet.
The gaming life of a video game reporter is a bit strange. You get games early. You play them when no one else is around. You have to play by some odd rules. And while nothing about it is painful or worth complaining about, it is odd in ways that many gamers probably don't realize.
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