Burnout Paradise, by Criterion Studios and Electronic Arts 

As we said in our brief preview of Burnout Paradise, we're rather enjoying its fresh take on the racing genre. When we interviewed Criterion Studios creative director Alex Ward following the game's award for Best Racing Game from the Game Critics Association, he told us, "It's the first open world game we know of that runs at sixty [frames per second.]" Having achieved this goal without stinting in any way on the graphics, Criterion joins Infinity Ward as the third party developers which have extracted the most from the tricky-to-program Playstation 3. With the demo for PS3 and Xbox 360 going live today, we once again contacted Electronic Arts and Criterion to find out what gamers should expect from the demo and the finished title, which arrives in stores on January 22nd. Producer Nick Channon answered our questions via email; here's what he had to say:

The great thing about the demo is that we have packed loads of gameplay into a small area of the map. As such, users will be able to get a real feel for the game by exploring the open world, playing a great new game mode called Stunt Run, and also have the ability to connect online. It was really important for us to give a real flavor of playing Burnout Paradise and the demo really does that.

When did Criterion begin work on it?

We started work on it about 3 months ago and have put as much effort into getting the demo right as we have the main game.

The structure of an open world racing game, as implemented in Burnout Paradise, is very different from the event-by-event approach found in traditional racing titles. What kind of feedback did you get about the various aspects of Burnout Paradise's open world structure, and how did that evolve the design of the game?

When we started Burnout Paradise we wanted to create a game that was truly next gen, part of this was challenging gaming conventions. Our goal was to create a game where there was no front end and no loading.  Every choice you make has to be done while you are still playing in the open world. Obviously this is a big change, but we feel that's what next gen gaming is all about. We've made loads of changes along the way and these changes came as a result of us playing through the game and also watching others play through it.

The key thing was to tell everyone what the core game elements are and how they work. Hence, we added the 'tutorial' when you first play the game. When you come across anything major, we pause the game and the DJ tells you what you need to know.

How difficult was it to implement the online system, which allows players to send invites to their friends without having to temporarily leave the game in order to go to a menu?

Online should play a major part in any next gen game, and at Criterion we play a lot online; however, we became frustrated with just how hard it was to get online and how much time you wasted sitting in lobbies waiting for people to join a game. As I've already said, we set out to change gaming conventions and we really felt it was time that lobbies became a thing of the past. You shouldn’t have to lose any time playing a game by waiting for others to join. The biggest challenge was coming up with a system that allowed you to send invites and connect while driving.

Ultimately, it came down to a few incredibly talented people with the determination to make the vision work. Sure, there were issues along the way, but we just had the mentality that we had to make it work and that's what we did, and we're incredibly proud of the results.

Also, will the new Showtime crash mode be playable online? If so, how will it work, and what's the longest you've seen someone keep their Showtime crash going?

Yes, Showtime is available online and you can have up to 8 players in the same world playing it all at once. The fun thing about Showtime is that it's completely possible to go around the entire city in one run. I'm sure it won't be long before we see someone getting from one side of the world to the other on YouTube, which would be great. The whole point of re-inventing crash was to allow the user complete and utter freedom to do it wherever they wanted.

How much of a challenge was it to QA and bug test this game?

Obviously QA for a game this size is always a challenge, simply due to the size of the game. However we had a huge team of testers playing the game, and we spent lots of time early making sure that the game was always incredibly stable, so full play-throughs happened much earlier than any game I've previously worked on. This allowed us to find many of the bugs early in the process. We also do lots of testing on the team, every team member has to play the game every day and give feedback on balancing or any issues they find.

Are there any funny bugs or flaws the team found that you can talk about?

One of our early bugs actually developed into a feature. One of the artists setup a jump ramp with a split polygon in it, this meant that when the car hit the ramp it would always roll. We thought this could be really cool and asked the art team to create split ramps and hence barrel rolls were added as a feature to Burnout Paradise.

What event types and race customization features should players expect to see in the final game?

The final game modes are Race, Road Rage, Marked Man, Stunt Run, and Burning Route. With regard to customization, we allow you to fully customize routes for Races online, as you can determine the start and end point and also put checkpoints in between.

After we received Channon's answers, we followed up with an EA publicist to get a more thorough description of the race types. Here's what we received: