BURNOUT 5 screenshots, info

http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-1-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-3-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-4-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-5-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-6-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-7-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-8-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...107929-9-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-10-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-11-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-12-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-13-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-14-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-15-1.jpg
http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbo...07929-16-1.jpg











http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=517430
http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=71451

__________________________________________________ __________________________

"This is Paradise City.

It's a sprawling metropolis of industry and commercialism and
entertainment, tangled up in 90 miles of wheel-melting asphalt. It's a
haven of interwoven pathways; of heart-stopping jumps at unfathomable
speeds through unbelievable obstacles. It's a world tailor-made for
racing and crashing, built from the ground up to steer the genre's
most explosive franchise to the top of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
hit lists. This is Burnout 5: Criterion Games' latest and greatest
ultra-speed destruction derby.

But this is no ordinary retooling of a square-pegged game to fit the
round holes of the next-generation platforms. This is a complete
reinvention of everything under the franchise's hood. We jumped at the
chance to talk to Criterion about how their prized possession is
evolving from a multi-headed speed demon to a streamlined, destructive
machine, and we weren't disappointed one bit with what we learned.

It's still Burnout -- don't you worry about that. It's just got a new
transmission and a hell of a lot more horsepower. Read on for all the
gritty details.

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 5
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-Revenge's excruciating
loading sequences constantly hampered its flow.

The city's massive scope gives Criterion the freedom to do away with
menu-driven gameplay, too. The Burnout Revenge experience was broken
into discrete chunks: Gameplay was segregated by location, and each
location had its own events that had to be unlocked one at a time.

No longer. The old menu system is all but gone. Burnout 5 will allow
players to play how they want, when they want, anywhere in the city.
"We want one thing to lead to another," Ward told us. "A race could
become a Road Rage, which could then become a Pursuit, and then in the
middle of that [the player] could get taken down and start flying
through the air." From there, you could decide to record the episode
as a crash, and "seamlessly blend into what you thought you knew was
Crash Mode-because we are taking that to a whole new level. It really
is about blending experiences together. We want the player to be able
to start things and end things anywhere."

And from the very beginning of the game, the player really will have
ready access to any part of the city. No walls will prevent you from
getting to certain zones. No glowing barriers will direct races one
way or the other. Unlockable content will be a thing of the past.
Instead, Criterion has thought up a new method of tracking your
accomplishments in-game: You'll earn yourself a driver's license.

Advancement in an Open World
Reflect on any huge racing game on any recent system and the
juxtaposition of victory with one particular car is unmistakable.
Especially in online play, players will generally gravitate towards
certain vehicles-and that fact isn't lost on Criterion's developers.
"If you've got one 'best car' in the game, that limits the online
game," said Criterion. "If you've played Project Gotham [Racing] where
everyone just drives the Ferrari F50, or Test Drive Online where
everyone drives the Celine all the time," they said, you've likely
noticed it. "Putting a 'best car' in the game really restricts game
progression, choice, and player experience."

So instead of having a wide variety of cars with a particular best
that gets unlocked by the end of the game, Criterion came up with the
Burnout Driver's License, which logs your in-game accomplishments-
crashes, high-speed runs, stunts, running other cars off the road, and
so on-and levels up the driver's abilities to match. "The game is
constantly tracking what you are doing, whether it be performing
takedowns, speeding, or exploring the world to increase your driving
skills," the developer told us. "These abilities are being tracked
both offline and online."

While individual cars do have their own stats, those stats can be
modified based on a driver's skill set. Thus, if you manage to track
down a particularly awesome car early in the game, it will likely be
incredibly hard to drive, as your driver stats will skew the car's
stats. Level up your license, though, and you'll be able to take that
wheel without much difficulty.

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.

SUBHEAD: Technical Takedown Burnout 5 may find release on both the PS3
and the Xbox 360, but for the Criterion team, the PS3 version will be
a huge focus. While Ward did say that it was simply too early to be
able to accurately predict exactly what would be in either release, he
noted that the team is attacking the PS3 with the same fervency they
did the PS2-one hell of a lot. 1080p over HDMI, for instance, just
isn't possible on the 360 at this point, although it's a foregone
conclusion on the PS3. The PS3's Sixaxis controller will provide
additional control options the 360's doesn't have. Plus, the PS3's
advanced processing capabilities make it particularly suited to the
physics-intensive crashes that are going to be taking place. And, boy
oh boy, will those be some spectacular crashes. The new physics engine
Criterion has implemented will allow fracturing of cars into 80
different parts, a massive leap from the 12 destructive components of
Burnout Revenge's vehicles. You'll be able to shear roofs off of
rides, shred doors and windows, and even tear entire cars in half
during takedowns and crashes. The visuals are only half of the action,
however; a huge amount of work has also been put into the audio, which
has been beefed up to react dynamically with the intricacies of every
crash. A devoted process will track the movements of each element in a
crash sequence and assign sounds to match the visual proceedings.
Thus, instead of the bland, regurgitated sound effects of previous
titles, Burnout 5's audio will, figuratively and literally, blow its
predecessors away."
__________________________________________________ ____________________________