Here's something you don't see every day. The Codename Cagney update for Burnout Paradise is available today for the Playstation 3, beating out the Xbox 360 release by four days. Oops, scratch that. Apparently extra bugs were found in the Xbox 360 version and Cagney has been delayed until a tentative July 24th release date. The picture above of a pickup truck being passed by a superfast race car is a visual metaphor. It's kind of like how you could play Unreal Tournament 3 on the Playstation 3 as long ago as last December, but you couldn't play it on the Xbox 360 until yesterday. A few more like these and the PS3 could actually be competitive for multiplatform releases!

Cagney adds a new "marked man" mode, which is sort of like tag with cars. One player is "it" and everyone has to try to take him out. The "it" player is slowed down and he can't see the other players' cars on his minimap. "This gets particularly mental with, uh, eight players in the game," notes Iain Angus in the video posted on Criterion's site. He proceeds to squeak out a win by one point. There are also two new cars, scads of new challenges, and timed cooperative missions. In "Milling Around", for instance, everyone has to meet up at a mill and then ramp over each other. Here's the list of changes.

Criterion is just getting warmed up with Cagney. Codename Davis will add a day-night cycle in August. This fall, Codename Eastwood will add an entirely new island. Criterion has plans to offer motorcycles and possibly even airplanes, although I can't imagine how these are going to work in a game that puts so much emphasis on crumpling cars. Personally, I'd be much happier if they'd go back to the old crash mode from Burnout 2.

Incidentally, while I was rooting around on the site wishing for once that I had the Playstation 3 version of a game, I came across this sweet incentive to play Burnout Paradise on a Playstation 3. Using any USB memory storage device, can upload data to Criterion's site and call up a map of all the secrets and challenges you have yet to unlock.