How do you feel about the original Mario Kart?
How you answer that question should pretty much some up how you feel about Bizarre Creations new racing game, blur. It is pretty much, as all the advertisements have depicted it, Mario Kart on crack. You race around a track (except instead of using "karts", you drive licensed cars), picking up power ups which are used against the other drivers. What kind of power ups? Well, stop me if you've heard of anything like: "bolts" which are green bullets that you can shoot forwards or backwards; "shunts" which are red missiles that home in on the target in front of you; mines which can be dropped or shot forward, nitrous boosts, shields, and even a lightning attack which targets the racer in first place.
If unlocking things and level progression is more you style, you are in luck. blur has taken the skill system, perks, and challenges that make Call of Duty so addicting, and applied it to racing goals. While there are too many to mention, lets just say, only on the fewest of occasions will you make it through an entire race without accidental doing something fill a meter somehow. I think Penny Arcades summary of the game put it best by saying "Its a game where you fill up meters, with racing thrown in between."
So, that, in a nutshell is the premise of the game.
The online matches of the game are crazy. Crazy fun. Tracks/events are broken down into tiers, ranging from A, which are the "super cars", to D, which are the less than super automobiles. I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of cars which can be unlocked as you level up in the game, and even more surprised to see that all cars in the tier (at least, as far as I can tell) match up well against each other. Even at level 26 (out of 50 I believe), I see people winning races using the 'starter' cars, so there doesn't appear to be any 'balancing' issues in their stats. The "normal" racing, which includes power ups, range from 1-10 person races, or for those that want a real chaotic fun time, 1-20. I don't spend much time in the 1-10 person races, I feel the more people I race against, the better chances I have of finding someone that I'm actually better than.
As a change of pace, there is also a "Destruction" mode, which is actually more Twisted Metal (the original), than Mario Kart. Drive around in circle, pick up power-ups, shoot/smash into other drivers. Rinse and repeat. Not much more clarification needed.
Yes, it has its latency issues at times, however, I believe that is due mostly to games being hosted by players (as evident by "host migration" which occasionally appears) and not on dedicated servers, but its nothing that appears to be out of the ordinary for online gaming.
The single player is what has been receiving lots of flak from other reviewers, with comments such as "Its too hard" and "There isn't any depth". To be honest, it took me more than two weeks to even PLAY the Single player, as I've been that addicted to racing online. Once I did however, I found it to be entertaining... and addicting in a different way. I was no longer trying to race against real counter-parts, but began racing myself to try and earn all the "lights" for an event. Lights being what Bizarre has dubbed as the "tasks you must earn to completely finish this event". Its not just racing against the CPU though. Once you have finished, and by finish, I mean, hit continue instead of "retry", you can then issue challenges to your friends. You send them a message saying something to the effect of "Hey, I scored 1200 points on this track, try and beat that sucka!" You can then further customize the challenge by saying "I did it with only using x amount of y item." So, again, while I've only played single player for a few hours, it does seem to be, if nothing else, serve as way for one to learn the ins and outs of each track to give you a better feel for their online counter parts.
All in all, I do think that blur is a very solid and fun game. Its one of those games where no matter how bad I am, or how many times I finish in last place (which is WAY more times than I want to admit), it makes me say "Okay, one more time, I KNOW I can do better than that", and in the end, isn't that what video games are all about? Just having fun?
