Hit the ground running. Criterion's making Paradise cooler. 

Things have been so crazy lately that I've been slipping with my usual current events reporting. I just stumbled upon this news about Burnout Paradise receiving an upcoming patch for the PS3 and 360 versions, conversely delivering some much-needed tweaks to satiate diehard players. Funny thing is, among the 30 different areas being refined, I've probably only found one or two of them to be glaringly obvious. Perhaps I just wasn't paying enough attention eh? Reportedly this patch will address everything from audio peformance to some in-game gaming logistics.

It would be an injustice to just summarize a few of the patch's highlights so here's the whole rundown:  

- PS3 game can crash when a player is taken down and the player that has performed the Takedown leaves the game.
- The game indefinitely displays "Connecting to Paradise City Servers" if it's having problems pinging the rebroadcast server.
- Disconnecting the controller before a race begines can mean that race timings can be manipulated with players who didn't cross the line first being awarded the win
- Repeatedly joining and leaving a game with 8 players can cause the game to hang.
- Hammering the A (360) or X (PS3) after unlocking a car can cause the game to hang.
- East Crawford and Watt St achievements can not be achieved if the player goes online and sets road rules before attempting them.
- Audio distortion when using 5.1 / DTS and looking rearwards.
- Enhanced 360 streaming performance stops instances where the game seems to pause for a second or so.
- Total time driven in player stats would stick at 145 hours
- VoIP connection problems with 8 player games.

New things to get excited about:

- We're going to be running road rule timers in all events and online challenges.
- Tuning Online Takedown logic & physical behaviour to iron out instances where it doesn't feel fair.
- Increase online race timer timeout so players have a greater chance of finishing the race.
- Fix drifting bug when drifting and boosting there wasn't any real control on the brake so players would grind around the walls of the corners. Getting better control.
- Boost fix, stabbing the boost has too much of a jerky behaviour in the car handling.
- Surround sound fix - Centre speaker was 4dB louder, ruining the mix and the speech has now been positioned correctly.
- Tweak Marked Man gameplay AI, was easy to exploit by driving in reverse.
- Increase the # of search results returned for online games.
- Increase Picture Paradise timer so it doesn't kick in so quickly.

Issues that are just too darn annoying to ignore:

- Some online race start points face the players in the wrong direction
- Instances where Barrel rolls were not registering correctly in Stunt Run
- Instances in Stunt Run where players would crash but not wreck & score multipliers by driving away
- Fixed instances where the counting of Boost Chains would drop out
- Some instances where Revenge Rivalries desync & don't get fixed until players are updated online.
- Some instance where the Host couldn't change the game access if the game was created through an invite.
- Achievements, Awards and Challenges numbers sometimes not updated if the player didn't leave the game cleanly
- Online challenge issues where the challenge couldn't be completed if it was started at the exact time that a player left the game.
- Incorrect rivalry updates when European players played against English or Japanese players. Online connection issues
- Force timeout if the 360 gets stuck on "Connecting to Paradise City Servers" - NAT error
- Rich presence on 360 didn't change correctly when there is a change in the game parameters.
- Instances where Friends were not being displayed on the mini map.

Guess I should look into dusting off my copy again and put Bomberman aside for awhile.