Blur and other Racing Games in the Near Future

Blur is an upcoming arcade racing video game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision. It features a racing style that incorporates real world cars and locales with arcade style handling and vehicular combat. The multiplayer beta for the game started on March 8th and was publicly available on the Xbox Live Marketplace on April 6th.

Blur follows a career mode where the story plays out through email messages sent through numerous fictional social networks, many of which reference more famous online services such as 'Inner Tube' (a parody of YouTube[citation needed]). Here, the player will encounter numerous characters and many licensed cars ranging from Dodge Vipers to Lotus Exiges to Ford Transit vans fitted with F1 engines, all of which have full damage modelling, a shield bar which can be used at any time by the player to protect the player's car from other weapons, and separate traits such as Acceleration, Speed, Drift, Grip and Stability. Some special car models have been designed by Bizarre Creations themselves. There are also some heavily altered versions of familiar urban environments, such as the Los Angeles river halfpipe and several parts of London. These areas were altered to make the races more enjoyable instead of the developers having to strictly abide by each twist and turn. Depending on the character(s) the player races against or tags along with in team races, they will have their own racing styles, power-up set ups, match types, locales, cars and will be apart of certain fictional servers. As the player races well, performs stunts and uses power-ups in certain ways during races, the player will gain 'fan points', Blur's equivalent to PGR's Kudos system. These points help the player progress through the career, purchase more cars and parts and earn more fans for the user base. During the career, challenges will take place midrace when the player drives through a fan icon. Completing these short challenges (e.g. find a secret nitro power-up) will reward the player with a fan points boost.

Multiplayer

The game can be played with up to 4 players via splitscreen and the game can be taken online with a maximum of 20. However, users cannot play online with splitscreen at the same time. Once online the player will encounter what Bizarre Creations have dubbed "Racebook"(a racing version of Facebook). Here, the user can create an account and join any of the fictional servers in the career. Each mode can be altered how the player sees fit (number of laps, assists, no. of power-ups, team races etc.) and can share these options with friends they make over the service. These races can be played in teams and the matches can be altered to support certain power-ups, cars, tracks and other variables. You can also set up a match type called "World Tour" which is essentially a quick play option for players who want to jump into a match with no hassle. Here, every player is given a random car and thrown into a random series of courses with a standard ruleset. Other multiplayer modes can be unlocked when multiple user's fan points culminate into a certain total

The beta for Blur began on March 8th, and beta codes were given out from websites such as GameSpot and GameSpy. The beta allows you to test out six tracks, four game modes, fourteen fully licensed vehicles, and over thirty challenges. Players can test out Blur's Leveling Up system, which unlocks various items until Level 10 is reached. (Rank cap now at 15 as of March 25) The beta also allows players to connect to Twitter to post updates via the game directly to their updates.

In the actual game you can reach up to level 50 and access up to 40 maps and cars


On April 6th the Multiplayer Beta became publicly available for everyone to download, via the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Reception

GameZone's Nick Akerman gave his impressions of the beta stating "Although the tracks we tested were predictable and uninspired, it certainly is a race worth jumping into. Steven Wright, in his VideogameUK hands-on, called it "Wipeout and Mario Kart’s illegitimate love-child."

http://www.blurgame.com

And the point of this thread is...

The graphics look sweet

Sean Okotami wrote:

And the point of this thread is...

Does it require one? He is simply informing us of a potentially interesting game. Seeing as this is the off topic discussion and such, he is perfectly entitled to do that. Had this been in the General discussion instead, you would have some validity in deeming it pointless. That is not the case though.

Warrior3000 wrote:

Sean Okotami wrote:

And the point of this thread is...

Does it require one? He is simply informing us of a potentially interesting game. Seeing as this is the off topic discussion and such, he is perfectly entitled to do that. Had this been in the General discussion instead, you would have some validity in deeming it pointless. That is not the case though.

Nice


SPLIT SECOND

In Split Second: Velocity, players take part in a fictional reality TV programme where participants race for money and glory. Throughout a race, players can build up their "powerplay" meter by performing stunts such as jumps and precision driving such as passing very close to objects and drifting. As the player builds up their meter, special events can be triggered which create obstacles for other players, create shortcuts or alter the race course entirely. These triggers are also activated by the player's AI opponents.

Such events include explosions, airplane crashes and building collapses. The severity of the events available to trigger varies depending on how full the player's meter is. The first level of events are available when two of the three bars on the HUD are full and the most extreme can only be triggered once all three are full. Event locations, and the vehicles they will affect, are highlighted with a blue glow and the player must time the action accurately in order to hinder his or her competitors as much as possible. As the powerplay meter resets once an event is triggered, the player must also strategise to choose whether to activate the less destrutive first-level events as soon as they are available, or save their powerplay points for longer and build them up further in order to use the top-tier actions. There are also certain powerplays that reset for the next lap, such as bombs dropped from helicopters, small environmental changes and secret shortcuts, but there will also be powerplays that will never reset, until the race is finished, restarted or quit. Black Rock Studios also wanted to make the HUD as simple as possible by taking away all unnecessary elements such as the speedometer and the track map (rendered useless due to the dynamic nature of the track) leaving only the lap count, position that the player is in and the powerplay meter, all dynamically positioned behind the car itself.

Using the reality TV show premise, the game is broken up into numerous seasons with 24 episodes each, with one episode consisting of three race events. One of the race modes in career and possibly, multiplayer has been revealed, called 'Nemesis' which replicates a scene from Terminator 2. While the player is racing along a huge coastal area, he or she must contend with a time limit and a series of trucks rolling coloured barrels out of the back to stop the player reaching the finish in time. Blue barrels takes away seconds and red barrels result in instant death, followed by a respawn. Overtaking a truck will add precious seconds to the timer. When the timer runs out, the game goes into a sudden death phase where the next fatal impact will end the race. Another career challenge has been dubbed, 'survival' where the player dodges incoming missile fire from a helicopter. The power-play gauge at this point now acts as a way to steer the missiles back at the helicopter, ultimately destroying it. The game has been confirmed to have multiplayer, online and offline.

RELEASE DATES
NA:May 18, 2010
EU:May 21, 2010

http://www.splitsecondvideogame.com/

that looks quite exhilarating.

http://www.wegame.com/watch/Split_Second_E3_Trailer/

Trailer for Split Second