No, not Blur the band! I ran out of enthusiasm for those guys the day I saw Graham Coxon’s segment on MTV Cribs. No, I’m talking about Blur the vidyagame, from Bizarre Creations, and published by Activision. ‘Just another racing game?!’ I hear you cry — ‘no!’ I say, ‘this one has licensed vehicles and guns and fireballs and stuff!’
Yeah that’s right. Guns ‘n’ shit. Activision were kind enough to let us run a few laps in advance of the game’s release on May 28th, and we liked what we saw. Essentially it’s Mario Kart with proper cars. Weapons are scattered around the track and include lasers, homing fireballs, shields and explosive explodey things. Oh, and boosts, and health packs to bring your car back into tip-top condition. Crashing and getting hit with enemy weapons will drain your life bar pretty swifty, at which point you explode, and have to wait to be put back on the track. In multiplayer mode, races are astonishingly balanced and frantic. Even though I was the best player there, somehow my useless opponents kept catching up and nearly winning, or winning. It’s guaranteed to keep everyone screaming and ranting right up to the chequered flag, in any case. A real blast.
geometry-wars style laser-shows are the order of the day
And if you don’t care for licensed vehicles, let me tell you why you should. See, I’m totally in the dark when it comes to cars, the only motorcarriage I’v ever fantasised about owning is a DMC 12 — but what I do know is that any time car manufacturers allow their products to be represented in-game, those vehicles usually take zero damage, and no matter how hard you smack ‘em into the crowd-stands, they’ll never suffer so much as a scratch. It’s annoying, boring and limits those racing titles to simulation fans who get giddy over a nicely polished tailpipe, and model-accurate oversteer. Blur lets you beat the crap out of cars, and puts the focus squarely on wrecking stuff. Which is where it belongs.
This also means Blur may also have the widest potential audience of any racing title — it’ll please the franchise-fans, who’ll doubtless get a giddy thrill out of seeing their pristine objects of desire thoroughly trashed, and it’ll please gamers raised on Mario Kart and F-Zero, whose only interest in cars is seeing them get all crumpled and broken.
