24 Minutes on Burnout Paradise

Regular readers will know that tomorrow is the beginning of Ready-Up’s World Record attempt, where six brave souls will drive like maniacs through the streets of Paradise City (and all the surrounding bits as well) for 24 long hours. They will not be alone. YOU will be there to support them. YOU will be jumping online, between 10am on Saturday and 10am Sunday, to join in with the fun and to keep the team alert with your friendly banter and great gameplay.

We’ll be there as a support team, to keep our guys sane. Anthony, John and myself will be on hand, providing refreshments, moral support and general all-round good spirit to keep the challengers going. Other team members will be drifting in and out as the event progresses – helping to keep the guys who are playing stimulated with new faces to stare blankly at! We’ll also be there if any of you want to say hi, or donate in person. Anthony has even promised that the support team may provide musical numbers to keep the morale up – as if the whole 24 hour thing wasn’t bad enough!

I will be on hand to keep everyone who’s not there updated via the medium of the interweb. Keep an eye on the site, the forum, Twitter and Facebook as we bring you the latest trackside news, with comments from the competitors (I can’t promise that these won’t be along the lines of “urgh” towards the end, however) and general updates on how the day is unfolding.

As I am there in a support capacity, I thought I would do the “journalisty” thing and try and get a feel for what our guys will be going through. So, I thought long and hard on what I could do to really bring the experience home and the answer, it seems, was obvious.

1) I have been to the cinema. I have watched the new Fast and Furious film. It was quite good. But more importantly, I think it got me in tune with, you know, cars and stuff.

2) I have been to B&Q and purchased a beanbag. Quite reasonably priced, at £10 and ostensibly bought to be used as a seat in a really comfy corner of the house that’s nice to sit and read in, but beanbags are the bottom-holsters of choice in Glasgow (albeit not from B&Q, but that is what we journalists call “artistic license”), so if I want to know what the guys are feeling I’ve got to live it.

3) I have fired up Burnout Paradise. Due to time constraints, both for the deadline of this blog and my bedtime, I can only manage a short blast on the game. To bring it in line with the record attempt, I opted for 24 minutes of gameplay.

During those 24 minutes I crashed more times than I care to remember. My trigger finger never left the accelerator and I rarely let up on the boost. I drove a myriad of cars, including one that didn’t seem to need roads where it was going, and I drove them fast. I didn’t stop and I had a blast and managed to unintentionally rhyme a bit of my blog. I also failed miserably to barrel roll my car – something I have been seemingly unable to do since day one.

From a comfort point of view, the beanbag came through for me – I found that with a little wiggle I could rearrange the bag into a more comfortable experience as the bumcheeks began to sing for salvation. Strictly speaking, I’m not sure watching Fast and Furious helped but it was fun and that’s what this is all about.

So, please, come along and join in the fun. We need you guys to get online and get into the games with the team. We will be monitoring the messages received over Live and ensuring invites get sent out on a regular basis. Using the great stats tracking over at www.criteriongames.com, I’ll be bringing you updates on who’s crashed the most, and which of our band of six is the one most likely to take you down – throwing down the racing gauntlet to the gaming community.

So, come on all you guys out there, why not spend 24 minutes on Burnout Paradise this weekend. You’re not doing it for journalistic reasons, you don’t have to worry about that – I’ve done the hard work for you. You’re doing it because this is a chance for the readers of this site and the Live community in general, to come together and have fun for a whole day and raise a shed load of cash in the process.

Now that’s a real achievement to unlock.