Burnout Paradise is one of the greatest examples of how a game franchise can use downloadable content to continue to offer gamers a great experience long after the game’s release date. Since January of 2008, when Burnout Paradise was released, we’ve seen a continuous flow of add-ons. They’ve brought us everything from classic movie cars, to more online game modes, to toy cars, and even the addition of motorcycles as Paradise City continues to grow. The latest update is the new Cops and Robbers online mode. This DLC comes with 33 new cop cars and a new capture the flag game mode. This is one of the best updates we have received from Criterion Games since the Motorcycle DLC!

Cops and Robbers pits two teams against each other to fight for a pile of gold that was dropped in Paradise City. This new DLC is online only and supports 2-8 players. One team will play as cops (blue team) with sirens and all. The other team will play as the robbers (red team) sporting any car you can get from Paradise City. The game is essentially a capture the flag game where the flag is a pile of gold that spawns randomly in the city. Each team will race to the gold, which appears on the map, and fight to see who can get it back to their base first. Of course this being a Burnout game you can expect a ton of takedowns and crashes happening all around the driver with the gold.

The games are played in a five round setting, first to three: wins. This can be tweaked, but five rounds seems to be about the norm. The party leader can control the round settings, as well as turn traffic on or off, choose which cars can and can’t be used and disable or enable boost. I find playing with traffic on makes for the best experience. Having to dodge enemies and traffic while trying to get the gold back to your base adds a ton of more excitement to the game. Playing with traffic off speeds up the game and is less challenging, so those who aren’t the best drivers should definitely play with the traffic off.

Criterion Games knows that us Burnout players love being in control. Being able to control the type of cars used in Cops and Robbers led to some interesting matches. I played in games of only Formula 1 cars or only 4×4 trucks and vans. Going from one extreme to the other was totally insane but awesome at the same time! With over 30 cop cars newly added with the DLC I found that being able to control the cars used is a great way to even out the playing field. Hands down my favorite team to play on was the cops. Not that being the robbers wasn’t fun, but being on the cops team meant you can use the siren and you constantly hear police chatter going on over the radio. Definitely a great touch of detail, which makes the experience just that much better.

What instantly drew me into the Cops and Robbers DLC is how fast paced everything is even without boost. Takedowns have been tweaked so you don’t need a boost to take people down. It was a lot of fun cutting off the gold carrier right before they reach their base or protecting my teammate from the other team by running them into walls or other cars. The tension and excitement of being the gold carrier or attempting to take out the carrier can’t be matched in any other Burnout game mode. However the easy takedowns did sometimes cause some issues when trying to protect your teammate with the gold. At times I would barely tap my teammate and their car would go crashing into the walls, giving me a team takedown and the gold. This is something that I was worried about only because of one reason, there’s always someone who plays online just to hinder the other players. In a couple of games I played, one of my teammates or I would have the gold and someone from our team would intentionally take us out. Although this was a rare occasion, it made me wish that team takedowns were removed from this mode.

Although the game had hardly any bugs there were some issues that caught my attention. One thing that was bothersome was the lack of variety. The two bases where you need to return the gold are always at the same points and the gold pile that you pick up always spawn in certain areas of the city. Since you have the whole city to drive around you can take multiple routes to the gold or back to the base, but there will always be certain routes that you will take because they are the fastest or easiest routes. Another issue was the image that appears on the screen that notifies you when the gold was dropped. These irksome pop-ups take over a big chunk of the screen and at times caused me to crash into traffic or right into a wall. This is something I could have done without. All I need is a small image announcement in the corner telling me which team has the gold and an announcer telling me when the gold is dropped or picked up. The last issue I had was finding a Cops and Robbers game to join. Getting online is easy but finding a Cops and Robbers match isn’t easy at all. There isn’t a simple search tool to find people playing specifically Cops and Robbers. You have to go to Freeburn online, find a group of people playing and hope they are playing Cops and Robbers. Or you can start your own lobby and hope people join. Seeing as it’s a new DLC online mode you would think they would allow you to search for Cops and Robbers games. Also keep in mind that in order to start a Cops and Robbers match you have to be equipped with a cop car, something they don’t tell you about beforehand.

Once you do find a match though I promise you will instantly fall in love with the new game mode. Much like other Burnout modes, you can’t sit there and play Cops and Robbers all day but it’s an excellent break from the other gameplay modes. You definitely need to use teamwork to win, which is much different from the other modes and takes time to adjust to it. Once you get the hang of it there really isn’t any mode that matches the excitement of Cops and Robbers. For you achievement and trophy fans, there are 8 more to earn with the DLC. At only $9.99 or 800 Microsoft points it’s easy to say BUY IT! Any Burnout fan will definitely be happy with their purchase if not for the 30+ new cop cars, then definitely for the new online mode.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - Bringin’ back the classics! - Tons of valuable playtime. - Comedic dialogue.	Doin’ It RONG: - No direct way to join the new mode. - Too many pop-ups on the screen. - Too few varied gold spawn points. - Could have used new cars for Robbers too.
FINAL SCORE: 8 / 10

       

Tags: add on pack, Cops and Robbers, DLC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 10:39 pm and is filed under DLC, Featured, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.