This coming year, to folks at Criterion Games have quite a lot in store for us for Burnout Paradise.

• Party Pack - On January 9th, they will be releasing the Party Pack, where up to 8 players can join in the fun and participate in a series of events to see who can come out on top. The pack was made specifically for some good, clean fun with your friends.
• Legendary Cars - Criterion created 4 new of this world sports supercars, one of which can actually hover and fly. They include the The Jansen 88 Special, Cavalry Bootlegger, Manhattan Spirit and the GT Nighthawk.
• Toy Cars - 9 toy sized cars have been made, including the Carson GT Concept P12, the Krieger Racing WTR, the Hunter Takedown 4×4 and the Hunter Manhattan.
• Boost Specials - If you like classic hotrods, with flaming exhausts, this add-on will satisfy your needs. There are 2 in this pack, one of which is the Carson Extreme Hotrod.
• Big Surf Island - Remember that closed suspensionn bridge in Paradise city? Well it will be finally opened once you get the Surf Island mod, which is a small island full of new stunt courses and buildings, etc.

You can get all these mods soon enough, but in February, the Ultimate Box will be released for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC which will include all of these mega mods into one compiled package. So stay tuned for more on Burnout Paradise.

Continue the discussion of Burnout Paradise over in the forums.

GTA IV has made its mark in 2008, as it was ranked as the 3rd most played game of 2008 on the Xbox Live network. Forza Motorsport 2 also came in as the 19th most played game. Hopefully in 2009, we may see more racing based titles making the top charts. Below are the 20 most played games in 2008 on Xbox Live.

1. Halo 3
2. Call of Duty 4
3. GTA IV
4. Gears of War 2
5. Gears of War
6. CoD: World at War
7. Guitar Hero III
8. Battlefield: Bad Company Demo
9. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo
10. Rock Band
11. Fable II
12. Mirror’s Edge Demo
13. Madden NFL 09
14. BF: Bad Company
15. Rainbow Six Vegas 2
16. UNO
17. Castle Crashers
18. COD: World at War Multiplayer Beta
19. Forza Motorsport 2
20. Too Human - Demo

Talk more about GTA4 in the forums.

Recently, an immature N4G member has taken the opportunity to abuse our post rating system, by giving each post a one star rating. I have disabled the mod and will be resetting all the scores due to the numerous amounts of threads affected. Otherwise I cannot do much because the user is behind a variety of proxy servers. I cannot say for sure when the system will be back online, but it will be sometime in the near future, once the threat has subsided.

Japanese magazine, GeMaga, recently published an interview with Polyphony Digital’s president, Kazunori Yamauchi. Two points were made clear in the session. He first discussed Gran Turismo 5, mentioning that it is still charted for a 2009 release, even though there is still a bit of give and take, so we may or may not see it in 2009.

The more important news however, is the rumour that Polyphony Digital may be expanding its line of games. We know PD as being racing oriented, but Yamauchi mentioned that the company wants to try something new and create a totally new, different and distinctive game. So does this mean they will be stepping into a new genre? Stay tuned.

It’s a new year, and we think we should start bringing you a new variety of racing content. Currently, we cover the latest information about upcoming racing titles and maybe the occasional game reviews. However, we would like to cover more, but we don’t exactly know what you all may specifically want.

I open up the floor to you all to recommend what we should cover. You can either submit your ideas:

• By commenting in this post
• Commenting in the forum thread here
• Emailing me at bradley@autogaming.net

Looking forward to the feedback.

From all the folks at AutoGaming, we wish you a wonderful 2009, and hope you all made your new year’s resolutions. We also look forward to yet another year of auto game racing, and hope you can join us in the journey.