14 DAY TRIAL // Criterion, the developer of the Burnout franchise, are really working over time to get more and more content available for their latest title Burnout Paradise, the one that some have criticized for not delivering enough to keep fans occupied.
The second patch for the game, which is codenamed Bogart (presumably after Humphrey "Bogey" Bogart) is due out on April 24 and is set to fix most if not all of the bugs and gameplay issues that players have been complaining about. This second patch will make no major changes to game modes or game balance and will only serve to create a stable platform on which the next update can be delivered.
The third Burnout Paradise update, which has no release date, is called "Cagney" (probably for James Cagney; the guys at Criterion are really passionate about their leading men) and will introduce three new game modes to the racing game.
Online Stunt Run will play out in short 2-minute sessions in which everyone tries to go for a high score as other players try and take each other out. Whoever gets taken out loses the combo score and is virtually out of the contest, but can still influence the sort of the game by taking out other players with high scores.
Online Road Rage is a team based mode. One team tries to get to a finish line going through a series of checkpoints while the other one tries to stop them. The catch is that the first team only seems the next checkpoint and has no idea where it will need to go next or how long before the finish while the second one has the full checkpoint list and can plan ambushes at strategic choke points along the route.
The last mode is called Online Market Man and involves a marked car, which is slower and all the other cars are chasing it. If the market car survives, he gets one point and whoever takes out the marked man also gets one point. There are as many rounds of gameplay, which last only 90 seconds, as there are players in the game.
The modes seem fun enough when reading about them, but we'll have to see how they hold up when the patch for Burnout Paradise gets released. Presumably sometime after the second patch gets released on April 24.