2007-04-20 00:52:54 Burnout 5 A first look from gamepro

http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/fea...

Bits and pieces... more at the link

Before mentioning some of the changes soon to come to the franchise, creative director Alex Ward quickly assured us that Burnout 5 (a working title only) will still be the game so many have come to love. "Burnout has always been about driving like a madman through traffic, and that hasn't changed at all." But, he said, "if we just made Burnout Revenge again on the PS3 and 360, no one would be satisfied with that-least of all us. [Burnout 5] is still based on the premise of driving like a maniac and crashing your car. But it's got some significant differences."

The granddaddy of all those differences in the game's new seamless world. Paradise City may seem ironically named (considering its rambunctious denizens), but for those of us navigating its streets, it's a utopia of high-speed destructive potential. Split up into five districts, together comprising 18 different neighborhoods, the city's size is roughly equivalent to 15 older Burnout courses chained together. And every virtual inch of it will be accessible to the player, from the outset of the game, without loading between districts. "We want to do away with loading," Ward said. "That's a big goal. We don't even know 100 percent if we can pull it off, but that is what we are aiming for." It's a good thing, too, because Revenge's excruciating loading sequences hampered its flow.

And as for managing your cars, Criterion's thought of that too: They've implemented permanent enhancement shops all over the city. Repair shops, for instance, can be used to fix up your newly acquired cars after you've run them off the road. A chop shop in the game will allow you to add special abilities to any given car. You can drive through gas stations to grab speed boosts at any time, and, because dust and grime is persistent in Paradise City, there will even be car washes to help keep your paint shiny.

And as for managing your cars, Criterion's thought of that too: They've implemented permanent enhancement shops all over the city. Repair shops, for instance, can be used to fix up your newly acquired cars after you've run them off the road. A chop shop in the game will allow you to add special abilities to any given car. You can drive through gas stations to grab speed boosts at any time, and, because dust and grime is persistent in Paradise City, there will even be car washes to help keep your paint shiny.