Explosions a plenty but Split/Second just misses the finish line
Dont get me wrong Split/ Second is def worth a test drive if you can find it cheap 2nd hand but dont pay showroom prices for this game because you may find yourself forcing yourself to like to to justify the price. That being said the visuals are pretty good but I would happily have let the developers strip away some of the detail if it meant the frame rates were better. There not really messed up but you do get the occasional slow down which always , I find , takes you out of the driving experience.
If you feel im being to negative in this review just bare in mind I now alot of good stuff has already been said by other people so Im just trying to make you aware of points that I would have had like to have been more clear as I feel some reviews have been wowed by the visual presentation of the game.
The MAIN PROBLEM I have with this game is the fact that no matter how much damage you do to the track and to other cars they are normally always ready to pass you at the next corner and do so with ease. ALL of the ememy cars move faster than yours and dont seem to be effected by physics half as much as your car is.
Another problem is that you have to drift to get energy for your powerplays but this cause you to slow down and other cars never seem to drift and so pass you with ease. And its the same with explosions as you may take lots of drift damage but the AI just flys by like you just let of a tiny fart. Another thing that really stuck out very early on the game is that apart from the power plays of making the track exlode on the cars theres no other car combat to speak of.......nothing....its REALLY disapointing. Theres so many points where id love to be able to just slam into another car and cause some mayhem but if you do the other cars will just shrug it off.
As I was mentioning earlier the sensation of speed is really missing for me in this game. No doubt parts feel good but more often than not the action just feels slugish and thats NOT what you go to a racing game for. Also the laps go on and on and ON and ON!!! Even elimination rounds where u have a timer that counts down and the person in last gets elimanated the timer takes nearly a whole lap to get started.
Some of this may all sound trivial when playing the game and as I said at the start of this review it IS a game worth playing just so you can have the experience there selling as there isnt any game that does what there doing.
BUT If you said to me 'hey Rekt I got £30 to spend what racing game should I get' Id say
'well considering Burnout Paradise the complete DLC edition is out for PSN/XBOX Live 23.99 and has STILL got a massive online community to mess with I think im gonna do that.
And thats what I been doing since. After completeing most of split second I went back to Burnout Paradise and was like NOW THIS IS WHY I LOVE RACING GAMES! :D (Speed, Brutal Takedowns and satisfying car combat, Balanced AI, challening tracks with races that dont take 10+mins to complete and more speed :) )
That being said I really hope the make split/second 2 and fix a lot of these problems and just add more features that will make this franchise what it needs to be. THEN I WILL BE SOLD :)