In the meantime I went back to Guitar Hero 3 and started up a couple new bands so I can rack up more cash to finish buying all the Store items. My best value is by playing on hard since I can 5 star most of the first 20 songs, that gets me $1200 per song. On expert I rarely get 5 stars even on the first few songs and 4 star expert only pays $1050. I bought all the available guitars and almost have enough to finish buying the characters, will probably just start a 4th band to make the last bit go faster. There’s also an achievement for earning a crazy amount of money, $350k or so, but that would probably require making a crap load of new bands just to earn money with. I’ll have to grab a pen & paper to see just how close I am to unlocking that one.

In Burnout Paradise I’ve found most of the smashes, billboards and super jumps but I haven’t done many of the events yet. I currently only have the class B license and have unlocked 16 of the 75 cars. Lots more to do in this one since I’m only 36% finished over all. Lots of challenges remain to be completed in the Freeburn online mode too, I’ve done 64/350, so if yer a Burnout fan on XBox Live look me up, gamertag Kalamaf.

Playing on XBox Live is a very quick and painless affair to get started. Simply hit right on the D-pad to bring up the Live menu and then choose what you want to do. I’ve entered Freeburn mode a couple of times so far, where all you do is drive around the city as per usual, but with up to 7 other players competing to get the best times and crashes on various roads. Of course you can just hunt the others down and smash into them if you so choose, it’s fun to see those that have the Vision camera. I hope they’re not all as blurry as the one I saw tonight, I could make out that the guy was waving, but that’s about it. Very fuzzy crappy picture, kinda like a 6 year old web cam.

Aside from that I’ve spend most of my time just cruising around looking for super jumps, billboards and gates to smash; throwing in the occasional crash challenge whenever I see a couple of buses together on the highway. Nothing like a good score multiplier to get things off to a bang.

Bottom line, in my opinion, if you liked the previous Burnout games even just a little bit, you need to get this one now. It’s great fun and a little more involved than previous outings.

Thankfully though there are tons of unlockables scattered throughout the city. 400 crash points (gates) and 120 Burnout billboards to smash. New cars periodically become available but in order to win them you have to find them and knock them off the road. Once you make them crash you can go to the junk yard to claim your new vehicle. There are 75 cars to own so that could take a while as well.

After playing the last 2 Burnouts extensively and not having to worry about nailing traffic from behind, this one is taking some time to get used to again. If you hit a car, whether it’s head on or from the back, you crash and usually wreck your car. No more traffic checking.

The other major change is that the traditional crash mode appears to be gone from the game. No longer do you have to speed down a road and choose just the right place to crash in order to wrack up the biggest dollar amount. Now, you can initiate a crash anywhere in the city simply by hitting both shoulder buttons at the same time. Your car will flip over and start barrel rolling along, pushing the A button makes it bounce and roll a bit more but consumes some of your Boost. Hitting other cars refills your boost meter, so the more you hit the further you can go. At first I thought this mode was kind of lame compared to the old method, but after doing it a few times I’m starting to like it. It’s much more interactive, instead of just getting that first big hit and the occasional explosion, all you got to do was watch the mayhem. Now you have to control where your car is going and try to hit the big moving targets. Hit a bus to earn $6000 and also add a multiplier to your score whereas small cars are only worth $1200.

Making up the city are 64 roads that you need to rule in offline mode. Ruling a road is achieved by completing 2 events on that particular road. First is the time trial, simply beat the current fastest time. Second is crash, initiate a crash on the road and rack up enough damages to beat the high score. Once you beat both events on a road, you rule it. Repeat this for each of the 64 roads. There are online versions of both events for all 64 roads as well, where you’ll compete against the world to rule the roads.

To be continued when time permits.

And speaking of Burnout, Paradise is now available in demo form on XBox Live! (and for PS3 I believe)  I snagged that today and tried it out for a half hour or so and from the little bit you can play it looks awesome.  It’s one of those games that I’ll have to own, I just hope I can pick it up for $50 somewhere, most stores around here charge $70 for new 360 games.

Burnout handles like a racing game should handle.  It’s blazing fast, the graphics are top notch and the cars turn on a dime.  I know it’s not realistic.  I don’t want realistic. I want fast and fun, it is a game after all.  In the meantime I guess I’ll play a little more PGR3 just to unlock some more achievements.