Making a demo for a large-scale open world game is a major challenge. We wanted to put together a snapshot of Most Wanted’s blend of exploration, connected competition and explosive, over-the-top police chase action to give you a taste of what to expect from the main game.

The action takes place in a locked down version of the city – you get to play in Fairhaven’s Downtown and Four Bridges districts. These areas are loaded with billboards, jumps, speed cameras and hidden cars.

The game kicks you off in Aston Martin’s beautiful V12 Vantage. Race to the first location, and we’ll bust out the classic Porsche 911 Carrera S.

Explore the city further, and you’ll find a “Jack Spot” with Audi’s flagship R8 Spyder. Park and hit triangle to instantly switch. It’s as easy as that. In the main game, it’s the same deal but on a grand scale. There are over a hundred Jack Spots to locate and discover cars.

Add a friend to Autolog, and we’ll bust out the final car of the demo, the fan-favorite Ford Focus RS500. And you definitely want to do this. Not only because the RS500 is a truly pimp car, but because just like the full game, our demo is all about Autolog.

Most Wanted is all about Speed Points. Everything you do in the game earns them — from online multiplayer, to escaping the cops, to cruising the city looking for cars and records to beat. Earn more than your friends to reach the top of your Most Wanted List.

Here are five easy tips for you guys to make racking up the maximum 50,000 demo Speed Points a breeze.

• Most Wanted is an open world game. When racing, keep an eye on the mini map in the bottom left of the screen to avoid missing crucial turns.
• Look out for gas stations. Drive through these to clean, repair and respray your car. If you’re taking a beating during a race or cop pursuit, these can make all the difference between first and last place, or escape and arrest.
• Win the “Keys to the City” event to unlock the Burn Nitrous modification. Equip it and then fill your nitrous gauge by driving against the flow, hitting jumps or taking down your opponents.
• The end of the second event finishes at a gas station. Behind it, you’ll find the R8 Spyder. It’s all-wheel-drive with a strong rear-wheel bias. Its planted, manageable handling combines beautifully with the AWD to give a little extra off road performance. Perfect for shaking the cops or hitting those billboards with a dirt run-up.
• With the cops on your tail, get out of sight and hit L3 to switch off the engine. You’ll enter Cool Down and reduce your Wanted gauge fast.

Next week sees the keenly anticipated release of Need for Speed Most Wanted, the latest release from Criterion Games – the legendary UK racing specialist behind the Burnout series and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, the phenomenal 2010 entry in EA’s long-running street racing franchise.

That the PlayStation 3 version is very, very good should come as no surprise, but somewhat more unexpected is the amount of care the studio has lavished on replicating the experience on PlayStation Vita. Producer Matt Webster and his team have squeezed almost the entire experience onto the handheld, and even found room for a little bit of extra content exclusive to the system.

We sat down with Matt earlier this week to find out exactly how Criterion has pulled it off.

PlayStation.Blog: What was your goal when you first started developing the PS Vita version of Most Wanted?
Matt Webster, Producer at Criterion Games: It was to make the same game – that was the goal. As much as we possibly could, we wanted to deliver all the great things about the console version of the game: an open world, freedom, choice, variety, highly connected. All those principles looked like they were achievable on the machine, so that was what we set out to do.

PSB: What were the main challenges you met during development?
MW: You just run across performance challenges. Some of those are fundamental, which you learn to overcome as development progresses, and others you have to make some compromises.

PSB: What kind of compromises are we talking about exactly?
MW: It is exactly the same game [as the PlayStation 3 version] apart from traffic density and number of players online. But I think that the asynchronous play is actually going to be more important.

PSB: How exactly does that work?

“I can push up my Speed Point level on PS3 multiplayer when I’m mobile with PS Vita, and vice versa.”

MW: So, if you play the single-player game, and then play muliplayer, any Speed Points you earn in SP also drive your MP progression, and that’s true when you play the game on PS Vita too. Anything you earn on PS Vita carries across to the console version. It’s a unified scoring system.

Everything you do in the game earns Speed Points. Speed Points determine your position on the Most Wanted list. Am I outscoring my friends; have I reached the necessary score threshold to take on one of the Most Wanted drivers in the solo game; what speed level am I at in MP; what have I unlocked, and so on. I can push up my Speed Point level on PS3 multiplayer when I’m mobile with PS Vita, and vice versa.

PSB: The easy option would have been to contract an external developer to work on the Vita version but you decided to keep it in-house. Why?
MW: It was something we wanted to do. It looked like the machine was going to be capable of delivering what we wanted to do. And the way that we work is very iterative – build, play, change, build, play, change – that’s how we work. When you go external it generally only works when you’ve got a finished game, otherwise there are too many moving parts.

So, it looked like something we’d be able to do and we were going to be able to push ourselves in some new directions. It was difficult, but we’re not ones to shy away from a challenge.

PSB: Do you think a massive open world racing game like Most Wanted is a good fit for a portable gaming device?
MW: I do. The game is about freedom and choice. We have a saying – ‘not playing the game is the game’. What that means is that not playing the authored experience that most games deliver for you actually is very important and a really significant part of the game.

The way that these devices are used – they’re picked up, they have some play, and they’re put down. It might be high frequency play, but not necessarily high amplitude, where I’m spending long sessions with it. Our game can work in either of those scenarios. I think the asynchronous part of it is going to be really powerful on that device – do something, have Autolog pick it up, and send it back.

“We have a saying – ‘not playing the game is the game’.”

I think it will turn out to be something that PS Vita owners didn’t realize was possible on that machine – it is quite a significant achievement to do an open world game to the level of quality that we’ve managed. And then to have something as highly connected as it is – that’s something fresh and new. I think it will find a really good home on PS Vita.

PSB: What kind of exclusive PS Vita content have you included?
MW: There are some exclusive PS Vita races and events in there for players to discover. It’s another way for players to earn exclusive SP – it’s an extra reward for having the game on multiple devices and it allows us to do something specifically tuned to that device.

PSB: Have you used the PS Vita’s unique features in any way?
MW: We’ll use the touch screen for changing music tracks and in some parts of the interface but the rest of it… you have to use those things where they serve a purpose, otherwise they’re just a gimmick. You run the risk of it not being taken seriously. We’ll absolutely use it when it makes sense to use it.

PSB: Presumably you’ll be supporting the PS3 version post launch with DLC. Will that also apply to the PS Vita version?
MW: Well, we’ll clarify that when the time comes.

One of the games attracting the most attention at E3 was EA’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit; the first title in the series developed by the people behind Burnout, Criterion Games.

James Deverill and Doug McConkey of that team gave me a demonstration of the game and it’s clear that they’re looking to return to the roots of a series that has gone through many changes since it first arrived way back in 1994.

“I remember playing Need for Speed even before working in the games industry,” said Deverill. “Three things stood out for me then: it had the coolest cars on the planet, it had amazing highways to drive them on and there were cops pursuing you. It’s these three active ingredients, in particular, that we want to bring back with our game.”

The playable demo at E3 was a game of Pursuit Mode, which is essentially cops and robbers with the old bill trying to ram the street racer’s sports car until it is totally wrecked. You can play as either a Cop or a Racer and both parties have their own weapons to add strategy. For example, a Cop can radio in a roadblock while a Racer can scramble his opponents radar and even send a decoy – a second blip on the Cop’s radar to throw them off the scent.

There are full career modes for both Cops and Racers that you can switch between at will, as well as an extensive suite of online modes.

“Online multiplayer supports eight players,” explains Deverill, “and one of the coolest things we’ve included, for me, is the way that you can have any combination of players; you can even have seven cops against one racer if you like and this adds a lot of variety.”

As you would expect from the brains behind Burnout, it is blisteringly fast and utterly gorgeous. It also boasts licensed supercars and a game world four times the size of Paradise City.

Unusually for game that features police chases at more than 250 miles per hour, the team seems most excited about Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’s menu interface.

“We’re very excited about the way that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit brings players together,” said Deverill. “Digital communication is at the heart of how people behave these days so, given that, we’ve included a social network in the game to connect, compare and compete. We call this the Need for Speed Autolog.”

In a nutshell, they’ve included everything you would expect from a basic social networking site and not only included it in the game, but also made it accessible via the web and mobile phones. Everything you do in the game is compared to what you’re friends are doing, whether they’re your PSN friends, your Facebook friends or just people you met playing the game.

“It can be a bit depressing to see a leaderboard and discover you’re ranked 10 millionth in the world, or something like that,” added McConkey “so we’re looking to drive rivalry between friends foremost.”

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is out on November 16, 2010.

Big Surf Island is a brand new playground we built from the ground up enhancing and expanding on everything we know you already love about Burnout Paradise. We’ve included new challenges and events for you to play online with your friends, an exciting new World to discover, the biggest and wildest jumps yet, plus a set of nine new vehicles to experience it all in. Yep… nine!

When you play Big Surf Island you’ll get a brand new Big Surf Island license to complete. This means new races, stunt runs, marked man, road rage, and even a brand new type of event, the Island Tour!

Of course there are also roads to rule, smashes, billboards and brand new “Mega Jumps” (even bigger than “Super Jumps”, super just wasn’t a big enough word to describe them)!

The Island also really comes to life online. We’re including 10 new online freeburn challenges, bringing our total online challenge count to 500!

We’ve unveiled four of the nine included cars so far (check out our Island trailer). When you buy the Island pack you’ll be given the Carson Dust Storm, an awesome purpose-built buggy ideal for the massive air and stunts of the Island.

Beat the Dust Storms’ burning route and win the Dust Storm Superturbo, a faster, more agile version of the Dust Storm in a cool matt black finish.

Win enough events on the Island and get the Hunter Olympus Governor, boss of all cars. The strongest car in the game, now available offline and with stunt boost, our resident designer Sarge Sullivan’s favourite new car (just check the license plate for proof).

To reward your dedication, when you complete your Island license you’ll get the Carson Annihilator Street Rod, the car with by far the best livery in Burnout. Strictly for the pros, this beast has a speed boost, rears up when boosting and can reach speeds in excess of 200 mph!

We’ve included so much content in this new DLC that it’s hard to get your head round it all. Check out this brand new CRASH TV for an in-depth Island tour explaining the offline and online progression, the new license, and four of the nine new vehicles.

We started supporting Burnout Paradise in January 2008 with our “Year of Paradise”, a promise to support the game through DLC. Here we are a year and a half and nine download packs later and we’ve used this experience and community feedback to create the best possible Burnout experience.

The Island pack is incredible value for money and the cheapest and best vacation you’ll ever get!

If, for some reason, you haven’t bought Burnout Paradise yet, you’ll need it to play Big Surf Island. Burnout Paradise is available to download right now for $19.99 from the PlayStation Network.

See you on the Island!

Island Pete
Big Surf Island Producer
Twitter: @IslandPete
@CriterionGames

We released our first premium content for Burnout Paradise – the Party Pack !

Our Freeburn online play is a cool way to hang out with your online friends, but we wanted to give you a way to play PlayStation, when your friends comes to visit.  The game supports up to 8-players for pass-the-pad single-screen action.

You can find out more on the Criterion Games Network.  We’re now making use of PlayStation’s in-game browser to bring you all the latest news direct from the Burnout team.

Party is our first premium-quality content for Burnout Paradise.  It’s available now from the PlayStation Store for $9.99.  And if you can’t bear to stop playing Burnout, you can also pick it up from our own Burnout Store within the game.

If you’re new to Burnout, you can now get the whole game bundled with all our 2008 updates and the Party Pack on the PlayStation Store for $29.99.

You can hit this link to see the team playing a session in our latest video podcast – Crash TV.

And finally, we used the Criterion Network to bring Burnout players exclusive news of a new pack for 2009.

Slotting in soon after the Party pack, Legendary Cars, Toy Cars and Boost Specials, comes another premium pack – Cops and Robbers.  This one’s dedicated to bringing you the thrills and spills of cops and robbers car chases in Paradise City.

We’re keeping the gameplay under wraps for the moment, but in the meantime here are the first images in all their glory.