Ok, so Criterion have added the restart feature to Burnout Paradise with the free 6th Feb 09 update. But where the heck is it?

You’d think that after failing an event you’d see an option to restart it? Err, no. Its been added to the options menu opened by pressing the right d-pad button:

Also the restart option is only available during an event! When you fail an event the option disappears and pressing right on the d-pad opens up your freeburn online menu as it always has. If you want to restart the last event you can do this as well now. As before press right on the d-pad to open up the Paradise City Live! menu. You should now see the option “restart previous event.”

Criterion will be releasing a free update to Burnout Paradise on the 6th Feb 09. This coincides with the release of the Burnout Paradise party pack, which you have to pay for.

There’s quite a lot of good stuff in the free update though:

• Restart - You can now quit or fail and event and restart it. Yay!!!!!
• Self-righting Barrel rolls – Making them nice and simple to pull off
• Vibrant visuals – Billboards, smashes and super jumps are now more obvious (via pulsation, and colour tweaks)
• Road rage tweaked – Time is not added after you’ve reached the target car total
• Stunt timer tweaked – Countdown is slower, making it easier to play at the start
• Vehicle dynamics overhaul – First cars available are now easier to drive
• Rebalanced events – To take into account all the other updates
• Junkyard tweaked – Easier to view vehicle stats, now with added vehicle filter
• In-game browser site – For PC and PS3 only to bring the upcoming Criterion Games Network
• In-game store - Easier to browse and buy new content

I’m very happy to see that Criterion have finally given in and added the restart feature. This improves the game no end by vastly reducing the time I used to spend driving back to the start of an event. Also Criterion are going to announce more details about the upcoming Criterion Games Network next week.

Criterion have released details about all 4 cars in the legendary cars pack which is due to be released in Spring 2009 for Burnout Paradise. They are:

• Jansen 88 Special – DeLorean DMC-12 from Back to the Future
• Manhattan Spirit – Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters
• GT Knighthawk – Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR used in the new Knight Rider
• Cavalry Bootlegger – 1969 Dodge Charger from Dukes of Hazzard

No idea how much this pack is going to cost, but probably around the 600-800 MS point mark. Here’s some pictures of these iconic cars (3 are iconic, 1 is just not KITT. Boo) and a video of the Jansen 88 in action and a look at the other 3:

Criteron Games have recently released the official route map of Paradise City. Now we can see what’s beyond those pesky concrete barriers that you hit all to often in the Burnout Paradise demo. All I’ve got to do now is memorise all those routes and I’m away. Easy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Paradise City map:

Those avid TAG readers will notice that the map shown above has changed somewhat since we first revealed it nearly a year ago. Here’s what the Paradise city map looked like 12 months ago:

Amongst all the route changes, large chunks of the map have been chopped, including the airport. Did you have to cut the airport, Criterion? I quite fancied going all GTA 3 and driving recklessly between all the planes. Boo. Anyway, the map is still pretty big, as anyone whose played the Burnout Paradise demo will testify.

You can download a hi-res version of the map from Criterion’s Burnout Paradise Downloads page.

Update 2nd Mar 08: Here’s a great interactive Burnout Paradise map. It contains all the locations of the super jumps, smashes, billboards etc.

Update 2nd Jan 09: Criterion is releasing the Big Surf Island download pack in 2009 to expand the Burnout Paradise map eastwards (the bit where the airport used to be on the old map). From the media that Criterion have released about this pack it looks like the airport has gone, to be replaced by a hotel, palm tress and a construction yard (with jumps).

Burnout Paradise is out now on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3