Blur

Many people believe that they can explain Blur in a few words, ‘Mario Kart with licensed cars.’ This explanation really does not do this game justice, because Blur is so much more than that. The brains over at Activision’s advertising department have used the phrase ‘Powered Up Racing’ in the various advertisements that have been floating around your web browser and on your television. Now that phrase is much more fitting.

Bizarre Creations have created a product which has employed the attractive bright neon look of Geometry Wars and their work on the Project Gotham Racing series is evident with the crisp, comfortable control of the cars in Blur. The reason why Blur isn’t just ‘Mario Kart with licensed cars’ is because Blur is not a kart racer. It doesn’t control, look or feel like a kart racer, people just see power ups and think ‘Mario Kart’. Although a large portion of the power-ups in Blur are recreations of those seen in Mario Kart, Blur has a damage model , and your cars can get ‘wrecked’ after they have taken too much damage. Due to the damage that your car can take, the Repair and Shield power-ups are floating around on the track.

Unlike Split/Second which adopted Nintendo’s mentality that you must give the player in last place a power-up which boosts them to the front of the pack, Blur has power-ups which are placed on the track, every time you complete a lap you will find that each power-up appears where it was positioned on the previous lap. This is a great decision, and forces the game to become more skill based and rewards those who have the ability to get to first place.

Before each race, you can also outfit you car with a single mod. The mod’s effect the way that you use or confront power-ups. For example, one Mod increases the amount of damage you do when you ram a opponent. Mods allow you to become a more effective opponent on the track, as you can deal more damage with your favourite power-ups. This also helps diversify the multiplayer player base, and creates another variable for each player apart from their car and skill level.

Blur’s visual style just screams ‘Need for Speed Underground’ but unlike that series, Blur does not focus so much on the narrative, which is a good thing. This is not to say that the world is without character, in the single player campaign each set of races has a ‘Boss’ who sets the tone for the race set. One thing that I wish that Blur took from other racers on the market was the customisation. Before each race you can choose your car and it’s colour, that’s it. I’m not asking for some full blown, hundreds of layers capable Forza 3 decal system, but the option of putting a few shapes and logos would have been a nice touch.

The single player campaign is fun for the first few hours, with a range of different events (some which are quite different from the usual time trial or race). But at around the 3 hour mark I found the A.I. drivers to become unbeatable and struggled to finish in the top 8. Then again, I am not a arcade racing enthusiast so others may not encounter this difficulty problem.

Thankfully, it felt like I was racing on a more even playing ground in the multiplayer, where the main focus of the game is. In the online portion of Blur, you gain ‘fans’ which are used as experience towards levelling up. One part of the multiplayer that I enjoyed was the challenges. The challenges are similar to what is seen in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer, with challenges like ‘Win a race without a power-up.’ Each car has two sets of challenges assigned to it; there are also daily challenges which are reset each day. Engauging in the completion of these challenges is addictive, and makes the objective in each race to be far more than just ‘win’.

There is also a cool feature titled ‘Previously On Blur’ which displays each time you start the game, and lists your previous accomplishments the last time you played. You can also send challenges to your friends for events on multiplayer (e.g beat my time in this time trial). You are also given the power to fill your friends twitter and Facebook feeds with your accomplishments, thankfully the content is controlled by you, not some ignorant bot.

The game also has split screen multiplayer and the ability to take screenshots, which are uploaded the Blur website. The single player in Blur is not the reason you should be buying this game, as it does become repetitive and frustrating with its rubber banding and sharp difficulty increase curve.

In multiplayer, Blur does an amazing job of providing you with a almost constant stream of rewards, through completing or making progress towards challenges or just winning events. Actually playing the game is a blast, despite your position in the race, the control of your car feels good, drifting works well and blowing up the car in front of you with a shunt is a satisfying experience.

Bizarre Creations has created one of the best arcade racers this generation; this title deserves to be on every racing fans shelf.