Criterion prepares for Burnout pit stop

The Burnout series may be famous for the unrivalled destruction that can be wrought upon vehicles, but Criterion has now announced that it is just as into fixing things as it is allowing users to smash things up.

The Guildford, UK-based developer this week announced two sets of patches to improve racing around Paradise City. A client-side patch, which will take the game to version 1.2 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 users, and a server-side patch will go live next week.

Patch 1.2 will address not only a number of lingering issues with the game that the development team has had its eye on, but also the top 10 player-reported bugs across the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. These include Xbox 360 achievement issues, an issue that would cause the PS3 game to crash just after an online takedown, and a problem that would cause the total time driven to stop being counted once it hit 145 hours.

Ongoing issues being fixed include car handling while boosting, an issue with artificial intelligence during marked-man events--with particular attention being paid to driving in reverse--and the addition of road-rule timers in all online events and challenges.

The server-side update coming next week will alter the way online ranking points are calculated, correcting an error that, according to Criterion, allows players to lose "a large amount of ranking points through no fault of their own."

Full details of patch 1.2 can be found on the Criterion Games Web site.