Burnout Paradise: now with bikes, trophies, and in digital form!

So, obviously EA focused a lot of effort showcasing its new, upcoming titles at today's press event. It was interesting to see that, amidst all that new content, they managed to set up some kiosks with Burnout Paradise and the title update formerly known as "Davis". Davis has been renamed the bike pack because it adds motorcycles to the Burnout mix along with day and night cycles, dynamic weather updating, and 70 new challenges for the bikes. The playable demo of the game didn't show off most of that, we were just able to zip around the city with one other person, but it gave a pretty good feel for the bike handling in the game. If anyone out there is hoping for some kind of detailed, realistic racing sim guess again. Criterion has kept things good and simple: the bike control has a good feel to it and walks the line between sim and arcade just like the car control does. The only slight alteration to the Burnout formula is the crashing and deformation on the bikes. There are crashes and some mild deformation on the bikes but nothing along the lines of the cars. Your racer also disappears pretty quickly when you wipe out and quickly resets.

Besides the playable content, the reps milling around the kiosks also took the time to point out the other upcoming Burnout business. Trophies are supposed to be added to the PS3 game in the fall at around the same time it's made available for download on the PlayStation Network. The additional content is a nice touch, especially the part where it's free, and making the whole game available on PlayStation network is interesting. Big question is going to be how big a footprint it's going to make on the hard drive but a game like Burnout's worth the space.