Wow! Week #3 for Criterion Games on the PlayStation Blog!

Week #1 we set the blog alight with details of the new game modes coming to Burnout Paradise in the Codename: Cagney update.

(And mentioned 1080i support for those who have HD TVs that only support that mode!)

Week#2 we talked about the Timed Challenges coming to Burnout Paradise in the Codename: Cagney update. (And broke the news that we’re supporting PlayStation Trophies retroactively in Burnout Paradise at some point, too!)

This week…

Well, we’re pleased to announce that Codename: Cagney – the FREE update game of changing content for Burnout Paradise is here!

To get it – just put your Burnout Paradise disk into your PlayStation 3, launch the game and it’ll download automatically.

It’s that easy – and it’s all FREE – new online game modes, new vehicles and a stack of enhancements and fixes to make playing Burnout Paradise even better.

But even with all that there’s more – there’s the Game’s new Live Page, which is the thing we’re really excited about and want to let you know about this week.

The Live Page does two cool things:

First, it serves up news about the game – so that’s news about updates and the kind of stuff you’d expect on criteriongames.com, but it’s also news about what’s happening in the game – so, expect to find news about what you’ve done in Paradise City as well as about what’s happening online, like when we hit the 100 millionth crash, for example.

Secondly (and this is the really, really cool bit), it’s where we can, using the Game Calendar, create what we’re calling ‘Live Broadcast Gameplay’. This is how it works:

If you check out the Game Calendar, you’ll see certain dates on it are ringed. These represent ‘Live Events’ that will occur on that day. In the news panel on the Live Page there’ll be a corresponding story telling you about what’s happening on those days.

So, for example:

Saturday 12th July 2008 – Prize Cars Weekend

Where for one day, if you go online we’ll let you try out all of the Carbon and XS Cars (that are normally available only when you complete the offline game) for you to test drive in races and Freeburning.

As this shows – it really allows us to mix up the game, and we’ve got a schedule packed with cool events that stretch out through the summer.

This breaks down as:

Test Drive Tuesdays

Every Tuesday, we’re going to mix things up online by focusing the game around a specific set of cars. For a whole day, your online junkyard will look radically different. This coming week (Tuesday 15th July 2008) will see only Speed Boost cars online.

Face Off Thursdays

Every Thursday, we’re going to mix up racing (both ranked and unranked.) Everyone’s junkyard will be as normal, but in races we’ll supply a certain set of cars to race in. This will really level the playing field in racing.

The other great thing about Live Events is that it allows us to award our players with all kinds of cool stuff. So, starting in a few weeks’ time:

Graduation Weekends

In these, we’ll let you try out new cars and new liveries for a whole weekend. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll be able to test drive our vehicle of choice, and if you want to keep it, then we’ll set up an online challenge for you to complete.

The first such event will be our “Mount Olympus” event in which you’ll get to test drive the new Hunter Olympus, and, if you win an Online Road Rage event in it, you’ll get to keep it forever.

We’ll be running multiple Graduation Weekends that will introduce even more vehicles and for those players who participate in all of them, there’ll be a special prize.

So there you go – more exciting and innovative stuff from Criterion Games. Now, let’s see what we can come up with for Week #4!