A little disappointing
Out in close proximity to Blur, Split Second was the OTHER hot racing game released in the 2nd quarter of the year.
The gimmick in Split Second is that you are on a TV show where you have to race through a few tracks and do battle with your opponents...except you cannot directly attack them. What you CAN do, however, is have the track itself attack your opponents. Construction equipment flies out of control. Parts of the course fall apart. Buildings blow up. And, occasionally, shortcuts pop up.
It is one of the most visually beautiful games on the market. Framerate is rock solid, even with a metric ton of crap going on on-screen all of the time. The tracks blow the heck up regularly and thoroughly. The sense of speed is real and extremely visceral. The sheer scope of the destruction that is unleashed routinely is truly amazing.
But, the game has problems. Significant ones. First, there aren't a lot of tracks, so you'll see the same things a lot. Some of the game types seem to be too random to be fun (races where you have to dodge missile attacks while driving is just annoying). It's also WAY too random. True, you can avoid most attacks if you're lucky, but there are few ways to see them coming and they happen A LOT as the race goes on. It helps that the game is heavily reliant upon rubber band AI, but it doesn't eliminate the problems.
In the end, I cannot help but compare the games and, well, Blur is a better game than Split/Second.