We looked at Blur a few months back prior to it’s release, since then we have been playing it you could say, quite a lot!!

The racing genre is one that is heavily saturated. In fact, one could say that it is overly full, with a pack of mediocre games competing with each other while a few float on top of the genre as the cream of the crop. Adding something new to the genre is tough, too, because there really is only so much that can be done with car racing. However, there are developers out there who think outside of the box… one of them being Bizarre Creations, the team behind Blur.

Blur presents the player with what initially seems to be a hybrid between traditional racing games and kart games. Sure, that’s a gross oversimplification, but let’s look at it objectively: Blur combines real world cars and realistic physics with on-track power-ups and abilities. Where a kart game would present the player with a level playing field, Blur introduces varied vehicle performance. Where a racing game would give the player a real-world experience, Blur gives them near-whimsical vehicle-based weaponry and a looser application of physics.

But the game is much more than just that. Blur tasks the player – in single player mode – with working through numerous challenges, presented as sets of races. Each race set has a boss to beat, which only becomes available when the player achieves certain preset goals within the group. There are numerous event types, ranging from frantic races in which twenty vehicles vie for the top spot, trading slams and weapons-fire, through to checkpoint based time trials and destruction events (which pit the player, armed with lots of weapons, against a bunch of drones.)

Each of these races is a visual feast, with high end graphics and well modelled vehicles complemented by stunning visual effects. The sound is excellent too, providing the player with much needed information, as well as audio flavour. The sound of an incoming weapon can help the player dodge at the right time, for example, and each car has a unique and authentic sound signature.

The game is surprisingly strategic, too. Most weapons have a default firing direction, but the player can change that quite easily, and to great effect. A mine fired forward, for example, makes an excellent, powerful short range weapon, while a boost fired in the opposite direction results in massive braking power, rather than breakneck speed. A clever player will be able to use the pickups extremely effectively, but this is no assurance of victory. While each car can carry up to three power-ups at a time, good driving will be essential to placing in the top three.

The AI drivers are extremely aggressive, even at the easiest play levels, and most wins will be skin-of-the-teeth affairs. The player will progress through the game in two ways.
Lights are earned for winning races, and fan numbers are increased by performing well on the track. Lights unlock new events, and fans unlock new vehicles. Vehicles, of which there are more than 55 licensed variants, are classified as either drifty, grippy, or somewhere inbetween.

There are also off-road vehicles, which lose less speed when leaving the track. The player will have to choose the right kind of vehicle to match events and their play style to get far in Blur, and will also have to complete not only overall race challenges, but little ‘Fan Demand’ challenges within the races themselves.

The game is exciting and very fast paced, often even frustrating. The only real issue it has is that it doesn’t lead to the kind of addiction that will have you playing for ages. After a few races, you’ll probably want to take a break, before getting back to it later. That isn’t really the case with the game’s very robust multiplayer, though. With the facility to have up to four competitors playing on split-screen (complemented by 16 AI players for the total of twenty) or up to twenty players per race, either online or via system-link (which is pretty astounding) the game is a multiplayer dream.

In addition to the power-ups that can be found on the track, Blur also allows racers to modify their vehicles with power-up modifiers, leading to a variety of results and further deepening the game’s strategy possibilities. And that’s really what Blur is all about – strategy. Fast-paced thinking while responding to a changing environment. It is, as a result, a challenging racer that, while not superrealistic, is great fun to play… and it is also a nice break from the run-of-the-mill, tired racing genre.

Big negative point for me – Blur is NOT compatible with the Logitech G25 steering wheel.