Blur Review

It’s night time, you’re driving a 2010 Camaro racing against 19 other drivers and it’s the final lap. Right in front of you there’s the finish line and there’s not another car in sight. Then all of a sudden, you look in your rearview mirror and see a shunt missile coming straight for you. You try your hardest to move out of the way but to no avail. Your car spins out of control, hit a wall and all you see is a Dodge Viper zooming pass you to take first place and finish the race. This is one of the craziest things happen all the time in Bizarre Creations’ Blur and it’s so much fun.

Blur heavily borrow elements like power ups from kart racers and throw in real licensed cars. As a result, you can send a homing missile to a H2 Hummer that’s in first place so you can take the lead. Not only can you use the power ups as an offensive move, but also as a defensive move. For example: that same H2 Hummer I shunted with a homing missile earlier now has a missile coming straight for me. I can either do two things: the first thing is to sharply turn at the last minute so I won’t get shunted and lose my place, protect myself by using a shield, or fire a mine from the back so that both projectiles can cancel each other out. Blur is not all about grabbing power ups either; it’s also about getting fans as well. Having fans let you unlock different cars and events both in single and multi player. To get fans, you need to use power ups, drift, complete fan demands and targets as well as get in one of the top three places. All those things combined makes for a challenging, but addicting experience.

The single player mode has events that let you do a series of races and challenges. The first couple of races is easy and makes you feel comfortable. As you go deeper to other events, the races and challenges gets harder and the A.I. for the most part makes you its bitch. Once someone hit you with a power up or two, expect to drop several places. If that’s not bad enough, each event has a specific driver to race on each event, but in order to race the driver, you must meet his/her demands like shunt ten cars or do two fan targets. That by itself is tedious. For the most part, beating a driver is more about luck than skill and once you win a race or wreck a driver’s car, you can’t help that you accomplished something big here. You also get to take the driver’s ride, how sweet is that?

In multiplayer you can either do a 4 player split screen à la Mario Kart, or go up against 19 other power up hungry drivers online. The split screen mode basically bring 3 of your friends to your living room, pick a car, vote on the track, race and have at it. The real meat and potatoes is online, which has a lot of different events like power up racing, a 20 person race; hardcore racing which uses no power ups; and my personal favorite Motor Mash, where you get to compete in a destruction derby-type event where there’s no racing, just a lot of open space and power ups. What makes the online multi player so damn enjoyable is that it’s fun even when you lose. The game is not all about getting to the top 3 places; it’s mostly getting points so you can level up and unlock more cars. Getting points is as easy as slowing down other players with power ups, drifting, or just finishing a race. Later in the rankings, you get to unlock mods which will give you an edge similar to Modern Warfare’s perk system. You start with presets of different mods load outs and then later you edit them to your liking. This is the most fun online multiplayer racing game I have enjoyed for a long, long time.

If you’re looking for a fun arcade racer then look no further than Blur. You will probably enjoy the single player up to a point, but once you get tired of the A.I. getting the best of you, head to the multiplayer section. I guarantee that playing the multiplayer will keep the game in your console for months to come.