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Write-Up:
The great thing with racing games it that you can pick them up whenever you like and get a few matches in and not need to be concerned with remembering what’s happening in the story or what save spot to load up; you just get instant action. Bizarre Creations and Activision’s latest racing game Blur is Mario Kart on crack and it completely satisfies the craving to get your latest fix of instant action. When I’ve got some friends over, normally we resort to handing the controller back and forth with Dirt 2 because Mario Kart just doesn’t do it for us. We needed a multiplayer racing game with power-ups and intense in-your-face action, and Blur has filled that gap. Released on May 25th for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for $60, here’s Blur.
Yea, there is no story.
Blur supports a pretty lengthy single player campaign, as well as 4-player split screen, LAN play and matches over PSN and Xbox Live. The multiplayer game is similar to Modern Warfare 2 in that you level up by winning matches and scoring points which in turn allows you to play additional game types like a destruction derby, no power-up races and team games, as well as and unlock better cars and mods. In addition, at level 50 you’ll unlock a legend mode like prestige in Modern Warfare 2, that gives you a legend car with a special paint job and resets your stats to level 1, and you can do this 10 times.
I clocked in around 25 hours or so on the normal difficulty setting and got through most of the single player levels, though I didn’t unlock everything. The campaign is broken down by opponent and each opponent will have 6 tracks that they’ll race you in with a set of goals that you must achieve before they will race you one-on-one for their personal ride and special mod. There are 3 types of matches: Race which is your standard race against up to 20 people in which you’ve got to get first through third to complete it, Destruction which is a race against the clock to destroy as many cars as possible, and Checkpoint which is a race against the clock to complete the track.
There are about 100 total cars to unlock in the game, which a lot of them are simply variations of the same model, each with different stats like speed, acceleration, grip and hit points. There is also a pretty complex trophy system that is going to take some serious play-time to achieve them all, as you’ve got to do some pretty crazy things.
The basic game-play mechanics revolve around collecting lights to unlock additional levels and vehicles. You earn lights for placing first through third, and an extra one for gaining a certain number of fans per level and another for completing a fan challenge. You gain fans by doing cool shit in each level like shooting missiles at other vehicles or pushing them off a cliff. The fan challenge in each level is running through 12 strategically placed gates in a given time period. This is actually much easier said than done though as you’ve got 19 other bastards shooting missiles up your ass and pushing you all over the track the entire race. Speaking of, there are 8 different power-ups that you’ll get to utilize in each race including E.M.P. bolts that shoot to the front of the pack, homing and non-homing missiles, mines, a barge that moves cars around, a nitro, a shield and a repair. Each car has a given number of hit points and if you run out of them, you wreck and respawn back on the track a few seconds later.
This game is intense and crazy as hell and like Mario Kart, you can go from first to last place in a matter of seconds, and just as quickly the opposite. The drivability of the vehicles is pretty realistic, but if you ever fall off of the track or get turned sideways or backwards, it will simply place you back in the correct direction, though you’ll lose a few valuable seconds. With that though, the game is actually pretty difficult, especially if you are grinding out all of the lights. Right around the third opponent the game gets significantly more difficult and likely will frustrate you a while until you practice a bit.
Unlike so many of the other racing games, there is actually no modding of your vehicles in Blur beyond simply changing your color and selecting your special power-up for each race. But, all in all, you’ve got a TON to do in this game. If you try to unlock everything you’re going to get in some serious playtime. I thought the race and checkpoint game-types were really fun every time, but the destruction matches got pretty stale after the first opponent. Nonetheless, speeding through a track at 200 miles per hour firing constant power-ups in a pack of 20 cars is amazing.
There is no denying that the graphics in Blur are beautiful. To me, the game is the power-up mechanics of Mario Kart meets the racing style of Dirt 2 meets the visual appeal of Geometry Wars. There aren’t any cut-scenes besides the game’s introduction and tutorials and the only voice actor is real-world racing star Danika Patrick who serves as a narrator between events. The sound settings in the game are pretty cool though because you can customize how you want to hear the surround sound for each speaker if you have the proper setup. The sound effects are kickass, but the soundtrack is kind of bland. I preferred the punk or alt-rock licensed soundtrack of Dirt 2 over the repetitive techno beats of Blur.
All in all, Blur is a pretty damn good racing game. The power-ups really make racing interesting and the speed and handling of modern non-cartoony vehicles is totally kick-ass. The graphics are beautiful but the soundtrack is pretty bland. If you’ve got some friends over, you’ve got local support of 4-player split screen or an elegant online leveling up system to keep you occupied for hours upon hours in addition to the lengthy single player campaign. I’m not sure I’ll ever play Mario Kart again now that I’ve got this kick ass title in my collection. Obviously if you aren’t into racing games this is a title you’ll want to look past, but if you like action-packed intense in-your-face racing with power-ups, Blur is definitely a game you should check out. What’s your favorite racing game? Leave your questions and comments below!
Great review as always. I’m not sure if I should pick this one up.. I’m not much of a racing games guy, but the power ups thing does seem to spice things up. I’ll think about it.