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.