Review: Blur

PS3, Xbox 360

By James Heffield / Monday, June 28 2010

Blur bucks the trend towards super realistic racing games with its addictive, brakes-optional, arcade action.

In many ways it’s like the cartoon kart racing games of old, but with slick graphics, spectacular damage effects and a selection of more than 50 real-life cars.

As players compete in the game’s race, checkpoint or demolition challenges, they can pick up power-ups to blow away the opposition or protect themselves. These power-ups include projectiles, lightning, mines, force fields and a nitro booster that rockets your vehicle forward with alarming speed.

The variety of these power-ups adds another dimension to the game, forcing racers to think about whether to hold on to a power-up or unleash it immediately on an unsuspecting victim. You can carry up to three at any one time, so you might hold on to a shield for protection, a repair to fix your car if it gets too damaged and a bolt power-up to launch at vehicles up ahead of you, for example.

Being rammed by other cars or hit by too many projectiles can cause your vehicle to become wrecked, but as is tradition in arcade games, bouncing off walls or dying isn't really a major problem. You will respawn and lose a few vital seconds if your car gets completely written off, but it’s usually the disruptive effects of bolts, which knock your car offline, or shunts, which cause you to flip spectacularly, that will lose you a race.

The tracks in the game range from urban circuits to dirt roads. Each race involves 20 competitors, unless you are competing in a checkpoint time trial event or a demolition challenge, where your goal is to destroy other vehicles.

As you progress through the game you will unlock new tracks, nine boss drivers to overcome, new cars, and some quirky vehicle mods. The cars you unlock are generally drifters, better suited to tracks with sweeping corners, “grippy” cars with good acceleration for urban courses, or offroad vehicles. Racing a Humvee through a tight Tokyo dock-yards course is unlikely to produce good results.

As you have probably gathered, Blur definitely isn’t a driving simulator but it’s a lot of fun, especially in multiplayer mode. Multiplayer allows up to four players in split screen mode, or 20 in online play. I didn’t test the multiplayer thoroughly, but in my limited experience of it, racing was extremely tight and action packed. You are likely to have projectiles flying at you and opponents in sight at every point throughout a race.

Blur
Developer: Bizarre Creations
Publisher: Activision
Better than: Burnout: Paradise
Worse than: Death Rally (1996)

The variety of power-ups adds real depth to Blur’s gameplay.

8/10