NIDZUMI+

When I heard that Bizarre Creations, famed for their work on Project Gotham Racing, were taking a change of direction to an arcade social network inspired racer with power ups, sceptical doesn’t even come close. Although it shouldn’t take too long to charm you as any initial preconceptions of simply a grittier arcade power-up laden version of Project Gotham vanish. Just take a look at these highly stylised visuals and you’re starting to get into something entirely separate and distinct from Project Gotham.

In Blur the racing isn’t simply getting to the finish line first, you’ll naturally want to get their in once piece. Gradually, over the course of the game, six power-ups will be introduced from a simple nitro boost to devastating shunt to unleash on any unfortunate racer nearby. The more advanced ones range from EMP blasts to the ability to drop mines. With every racer, AI or Human, having a health bar the door is wide open for constant chaos and hazards on track. You’ll have to keep one eye on your on health while keeping the other on the car tumbling towards you because he didn’t pay attention to the former.

During this you’ll be earning ‘fan points’ which I will lazily compare to the Kudos system from Project Gotham. You’ll gain these points through utilizing power-ups to the best of your ability, finishing as high as possible and nailing the fan demands. The fan demands are challenges that you’ll get during the race. Challenges such as using a power-up at a correct time or finding a shortcut. If you manage to complete any of these tasks you’ll be bountifully rewarded with a truck load of points.

Ignoring past examples Blur will tell a tale within a racing game but instead of awkward cut scenes akin to a Fast and Furious, Bizarre have opted for a serious of fictional social networks. Current trendy and weird sounding Web 2.0 networks will be parodied like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all in the interest of creating a more engaging world to drive in.

Considering what you’ll do to the vehicles you’ll drive, a la the insane crashes and subsequent damage, it’s a shock when you hear that a majority of the cars are licensed. A wide selection of cars from different manufactures make up the bill that has been hand selected based on how fun each car is to drive in real life. That’s not entirely important in a game like this but I guess that’s just Bizarre’s realistic slant on things.

You can then take those cars all over the world. Using resources previously generated from past games, Bizarre are altering real world locales to fit the arcade inspired nature of the game. London, LA, Toyko and more are destinations on your inevitable rise from no one to someone.

This lengthy and deep singleplayer is to be backed up by 4 player splitscreen. I know splitscreen isn’t everyone’s cup of tea with online being as good as it is right now but you’ve got to commend Bizarre. Splitscreen might not be the only reason for purchasing Blur but the approachable nature of the game will be appealing for friends to jump in. It would be unwise and lazy to call this a grittier Mario Kart but they are definitely targeting that splitscreen audience that used to play for hours at a time while firing power-ups at each other.

Obviously you’re wanting online multiplayer and that’s here too. You’ll browse through the social networking inspired server list and jump into a race with up to twenty real life players. Full customisation of options hopefully won’t split the userbase too much as Blur will allow for complete user control over power-ups and lonesome or team races.

It’s hard to believe that with all these features and modes, that Blur is actually one of the games not to be delayed into 2010. Party inducing splitscreen, a robust multiplayer along with one of the most in-depth singleplayer experiences for a racing in a long time, should keep Blur stuck to your disc trays for weeks. It might not be the apex and racing line dependant experience they are known for but Blur is very much a unique and originally inspired title that should be worth keeping an eye on, if only to see if Bizarre can pull off the drastic change in direction.