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'Danger Zone' turns the best part of 'Burnout' into a full game
It's been nine long years since we had a proper Burnout game. But when Paradise launched back in 2008 it didn't come with the franchise's trademark Crash Mode, the arcadey feature that tasked players with hurtling themselves through an intersection to cause as big of a car accident as possible. That debuted in 2002's Point of Impact, returning in Takedown in 2004 and Revenge a year later before it was scrapped for an inferior clone in Paradise. Well, today there's some good news: the latest project from former Burnout developers is Danger Zone, a game that sounds an awful lot like Crash Mode: The Game.
Alex Ward flips out during MTV interview
Did you play EA's notoriously over-hyped shooter, Black? We mean, did you really play it? Enough to understand the subtle geopolitical message that gelled together the very fabric of the game? Would you say you beat the game? If so, don't tell Alex Ward that. As MTV News' Stephen Totilo found out, using such common terminology for completing a game in the presence of Criterion's creative director is enough to warrant a long-winded rant against Western gamers. Between finding hidden messages in Pac-Man and taking absurd leaps in logic when analyzing the speech habits of Americans, Ward spits fire for just under five minutes of insanity. Totilo attempts to get him back on track regarding the plot (or lack thereof) of Black, but even after a few zingers Ward just keeps on trucking. Let's see. An arrogant British man grandstanding about the stupidity of Americans? Yeah, that's real creative. About as creative as Black.
Criterion's Alex Ward chats up Wii and DS
Alex Ward, director of design for Criterion Games (Burnout), recently talked about the DS and Wii during an interview with N'Gai Croal. Alex talks, rather favorably, in regards to the Wii and DS, but mainly focuses on Burnout stuff outside the realm of Nintendo. While we could definitely care less about that Sony and Microsoft stuff, Alex makes a few interesting comments regarding their approach to their first attempt at making a game for the Wii or DS, should the developers pursue such a project: What about Wii? You've got Nintendo fans--what can you offer them? At the moment, we're only working on Playstation 3 and 360. We're into the Wii. It's not like we're not. We used to get all the hate mail from people saying, "Why aren't you doing this?" I'd love to do something on that system. We'd like to think about exactly about what it would be. And we'd have to build something bespoke. I've met with the Nintendo guys. They've shown me their stuff. It's cool. I think we'd have to look at very bespoke experiences. So you don't want to just do a port. No way. We just don't do ports at Criterion. We never have. When we did Burnout 1 on Xbox, it was like, "What else can we do?" We were the first game on Xbox to do Live scoreboards. Burnout Revenge on 360, it was a three-month job, but we were big on Save and Share. We were big on Live Revenge. We knew that Live was going to be where it was at, so we put all our time into Live features. When we get a look at the hardware, we just think, "What's the best game we can do on that?" If we were to do a DS game--and we haven't done a DS game yet; the last Burnout for DS wasn't done by us--we've got some ideas we think that would be very bespoke. Using the stylus. Using the microphone. Using everything you can to make that system fun. And hypothetically, Burnout on Wii--maybe you wouldn't do any driving in it at all. Let's do something totally different with it. The Burnout team, we want to do it, but at the moment. we're just focused on doing the PS3 and Xbox 360 Burnout 5. Who knows what we'll do after that. We'll probably be dead.
Criterion seeks 'verisimilitude' in Burnout 5
New buzzword: verisimilitude. It's the term Criterion front man Alex Ward borrows from the director of the recent Superman flick; it's the term that defines the focus of Burnout 5's crashes. That is to say, "[if] you don't believe the crash is real, then it's not going to frighten you," Ward recently told Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, "...The first crash you see on PlayStation 3 has got to go way beyond everything you've ever seen, beyond anything that we've ever done."Note Ward's usage of "PlayStation 3." Criterion is Sony developer at heart, and Ward isn't shy about his allegiance. Regardless of Sony's miscues, Ward's transparent loyalty is a reminder that big-time developers are dedicated to delivering for PlayStation 3. Then again, Burnout 5 is also headed to Xbox 360. Will we be able to discern a difference?
