Review: Blur (PS3)
Blur is the latest racing game from Bizarre Creations, developers of both the Project Gotham Racing series and the Geometry Wars games. While elements from those previous releases are evident in Blur, there are also plenty of new ideas that deem make it worth a closer look.
If you want to describe Blur in the simplest of terms, it’s a kart racing game aimed at a more mature audience. As demonstrated by the ad campaign for the game, you could accurately call it a more realistic take on Mario Kart. It features fast paced action and lots of outlandish power-ups, but you’re racing real life cars through real world environments. If that was all that the game did, it probably wouldn’t merit too much attention. However, Bizarre Creations wisely added a few key features that make Blur more than a simple re-skinning of an existing franchise.
Perhaps the most significant addition is one that applies to both the game’s single player career as well as the multi-player modes: a sense of true progression. As you complete events in single player and races in multi-player, you earn experience. Gain enough experience and you level up, unlocking new cars, events, modes, and abilities. We’ve seen features like this in a number of first-person shooters lately, and it’s a surprisingly good fit for a racing game. The constant presence of your level-up progress bar is excellent motivation to play through just one more event in order to reach that next level. In addition, every time you start up the game, you are presented with a brief “Previously on Blur” segment, which shows you what you unlocked during your previous play session and highlights milestones that you are close to reaching. It’s a small touch, but in a game that gives you lots of options on how to make progress, this feature gives you some ideas on what to pursue next.
Vrooom!
Beyond the element of progression, Blur brings several other creative ideas to the table. You can pick a rival from your list of friends who also have the game, which will allow you to compare scores and times with that person after every single-player event. You can also issue challenges to any of your friends, and post messages about your progress by linking in your Facebook or Twitter accounts. Some might not find the social networking aspects of the game too appealing, but it’s completely optional, and will certainly appeal to a segment of Blur‘s target audience.
While all of these creative ideas and new features are worth mentioning, it’s meaningless if the game underneath it all isn’t fun to play. Fortunately, Blur does not disappoint in this department. The controls are responsive, and the fast-paced nature of the racing keeps things exciting. Each of the power-ups has multiple applications, allowing you to attack your opponents as well as defend against their attacks. Since none of the power-ups are random, you can choose which ones to pick up and which to avoid. You can also hold three power-ups at once, and you can easily switch between your available power-ups and drop unneeded ones at any time. All of this adds up to a system that rewards you for planning ahead and strategically using your power-ups. The game cleverly displays all information about your current power-ups on the back bumper of your car, which not only reduces clutter on the screen, it also allows you to quickly check and manage your power-ups without taking your eyes off of the action.
It should be clear by this point that Blur does a lot of things right. It looks great, with lots of neon lighting effects that bring to mind Geometry Wars. The cars handle well and the action is appropriately fast-paced, with a variety of power-ups that allow players to come up with some fairly in-depth strategies. The sense of progression and the unlockable cars, abilities, and modes give you a reason to keep on playing.
Of course, the game is not without its faults. The difficulty of the single player mode ramps up a little too quickly, requiring the player to complete very specific objectives before being allowed to challenge their next rival. Also, the PS3 version (reviewed here) seems to be suffering from some networking issues. I had to update my router firmware and configure some port forwarding settings before I could go online with Blur, even though other online PS3 games were working perfectly for me. A quick Google search revealed that lots of other players had been encountering similar problems. The impact of these issues is evident when looking at the number of players online for each version of the game. On a recent Saturday night, there were a total of about 600 players online for the PS3 version compared to about 1800 players online on the Xbox 360. If you own both a 360 and a PS3, you might want to opt for the 360 version unless you have a bunch of friends who plan to play on Sony’s console.
Regardless of which version you choose, you’re in for a lot of fun. Blur is an easy recommendation for fans of kart racers, as it delivers everything you would expect from the genre while introducing a number of innovative features that really set it apart from the crowd. Even with several other competing racing games being released recently, Blur has enough style and creativity to merit a purchase.
