I
had the chance to try out the
Burnout Paradise
Bike
Pack for about an hour today. The new Pack isn't time limited or
anything, I just haven't had a lot of time to play recently. The new
Pack is available free of charge. It's a little over 450 megabytes,
so even on high speed it can take a bit of time to download,
especially if you're trying to upload videos to Revver
of YouTube
at the same time you're trying to download it.
You can actually do this in game. Just shut off your bike and change the camera angle.
|
Thankfully,
with the Bike Pack there isn't a whole lot to talk about as far as
new features go, since we already mentioned them in the previous
article. It's very satisfying to use bikes in a
Burnout
title for the first time. You've
got a choice from two bikes to start with, a slew of fresh Burning
Routes, called Burning Rides for the bike versions, which include
either day or night routes, and a new license to complete. The new
day and night cycle brings new challenges to Road Rules, since
traffic density differs by time of day. This also makes things a
little more fair, because players won't just be able to pick the time
of day when roads are clearest and use that as the standard for that
street. You'll have to set the Road Rules for both high and low
traffic densities.
I
haven't seen the dynamic weather system in effect yet, but it is
there. Other players I spoke to while online during my short play
session talked about racing in the rain. I'm excited to get to try
that for myself, though I still don't know if we'll be seeing any
snow in the game.
You can jump, just no stunts.
|
One
thing you'll probably notice quite quickly while using the Bike Pack
is that there are no bikes on the road while you're playing in a car
and, when online, none of the other players are in cars while you're
on a bike and vice-versa. Most likely, Criterion Games hasn't figured
out how to make the game fair for players who want to be on bikes
while other players are using cars. Currently, the players on the
bikes would be much simpler targets.
Controlling
the bikes are relatively easy. There is a bit of a learning curve for
effective braking and cornering, but it actually feels quite natural.
It took me less than a minute to get a feel for tight cornering.
Pulling off wheelies is easy as pie and, interestingly, Criterion
decided to make it impossible to fall off when doing one. The hold
the control stick down and the biker will manage the rest for you.
You will, however, want to make sure if you need to turn a corner,
that the bike is down. Quite unfortunately, there is no E-Brake, so
you'd darn well better ease up the gas before you crash into that
wall in front of you! This leaves all turning control down to the
gas, brakes and the body control of the riders, who are quite
skilled, so you can take some pretty tight turns at relatively high
speeds. I say relatively because the tighter the turn, the slower
you'll need to be going. The lack of E-Brake does leave out the
possibility of sliding, which could have been a useful, if not at
least cool, gameplay mechanic.
There are areas in Paradise City where only bikes can go.
|
Another
addition, introduced specially for the bikes portion of the game, are
Paradise Awards. They are like extra Achievements for that portion of
the game. Why they didn't just add extra Achievements is beyond me,
but it's still a nice addition because it increases the continuing
playability of the game.
Out
of the two bikes readily available when you download the Bike Pack,
neither of them have boost. You can't pull off stunts while on a
bike, and you can't do a quick stop or 180. Overall, it looks like
what the Bike Pack is really going for, as far as the bikes go at
least, is an introduction to bikes, something to give the development
team a chance to play around with bike controls while still giving
players the chance to actually use them, rather than just wait for a
full blown bike control system. Personally, I like that idea. They've
already got the basics down, so the bikes handle precisely. Now all
they've got to add in are the rest of the
Burnout
elements
to turn biking in
Burnout Paradise
into
a true
Burnout
experience.
Boats at the docks of Paradise Island.
|
Criterion
Games is still working on more major game changing updates that are
still yet to come. The next major update, currently codenamed
Eastwood, though it already nicknamed Island, will extend the reach
of Paradise City to a brand new Island off the coast. Players can
already take a look at the “progress” in the game by heading to
the massive bridge that was added near Angus Wharf when the Cagney
update launched. We haven't confirmed it yet, but we're pretty sure
this will be yet another free update from Criterion, and it's looking
to be coming along beautifully so far. Who knows, maybe it will
include some new bike gameplay mechanics as well.
The beach on Paradise Island.
|