Review: Split Second: Velocity

PC, PS3, Xbox 360

By James Heffield / Tuesday, June 29 2010

If you’ve ever seen the movie Final Destination, you will have some idea of what hurtling around the track in Disney’s new arcade racer Split Second is like. You encounter so many swinging crane wrecking balls, explosions and collapsing buildings that surviving a full circuit without crashing in spectacular fashion is tantamount to a miracle.

These regular and seemingly impossible incidents are at the heart of Disney’s latest arcade racer. Playing as a competitor in an insane TV racing show of the same name, you hurtle through construction sites and exploding cityscapes in an attempt to win races and the adoration of the show’s “billions” of viewers. But if you thought the carnage unwinding before you was the act of an angry god out to get you, you’d be wrong.

These seemingly random events are actually triggered by power plays -- the one thing that gives this title some worth as a member of the arcade racer genre. Power plays can be earned by race competitors by drifting, drafting and jumping through the game’s quirky events. Once earned, they can be triggered at preset points around the track in an attempt to wreck opposition cars. Some of the power plays can activate shortcuts, by blowing a huge hole in a building for example, while others can alter the layout of the entire track by forcing you to race through massive fallen pipe or navigate the ruins of a fallen bridge.

There is so much variety in what any one power play will trigger that it’s almost tempting to slam on the brakes and park up to watch a catastrophic power-play event unwind in all its glory. Of course, that would be a little counter-productive when it comes to winning race events, and that’s what the player’s primary goal is. The game is structured like a series of 12 Split Second TV show seasons. By winning races, surviving survival and air strike challenges and repeatedly avoiding last place in elimination challenges, players can earn credits to unlock new cars, events and seasons of the show.

It’s not as good as Blur (see review), which requires a little more thought and skill, but the mindless and slightly more destructive nature of Split Second will appeal to some people. In some ways the two games are surprisingly similar, even down to the graphics and the buttons chosen as default primary controls. However, I found the graphics in Split Second a little crowded at times and it was often hard to know which way an upcoming corner was going until I was almost upon it. Of course, bouncing off the walls isn’t a major problem, but it was still frustrating to think of all the damage I’d be doing to my poor old car’s paint job!

Split Second
Developer: Black Rock Studio
Publisher: Disney
Better than: WipEout
Worse than: Blur

Not bad if you’re after a slight twist on conventional arcade racing.

6.5/10