Blur is the self proclaimed racing game for big boys developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision. Blur is an action racing game that gives players power ups and lets them battle it out to see who comes in first. It features a single player career where player get to earn the right to face their rivals and multiplayer races and destruction matches with up to 20 players. The races take place at real world locations and the game boasts over 55 licensed cars to crash and blow up.
Blur’s single player portion comprises only of career mode and has no single race option. Career mode in Blur consists of a series of rivals and each rival has 6 events in which they have you compete. The first and most common event found in career mode is the basic race where you need to come in first place. Next there’s checkpoint where there’s a time limit and the player must get all the checkpoints before it runs out, time can be extended by getting clocks and going through the checkpoint gates. The next event is destruction where you get points and extra time by destroying other weaker vehicles and reaching the target score. For each event you get a certain amount of lights depending on how well you did and then these lights can be used to unlock new rivals. In each event there are also 2 bonus objectives, reaching the target number of fans and going through fan gates, which are these 12 gates players must drive through in the middle of events and awards extra fans. Fans are basically experience points in blur and as you get more fans you can gain levels and unlock new cars. The final event each rival has is the Head on event where the player goes one on one with the rival once they meet all of their demands. After winning a head on event the player is awarded their rival’s car and a unique mod which the player can use in races from then on.
Blur uses some interesting social features in the game that are actually kind of cool to use. My personal favorite is the ability to create friend challenges in career mode, if you do really well in an event you can choose to create a challenge and send it to your friends that also play blur and see if they can beat it. They also allow you to choose a friend during career mode to be your rival and after every event you can compare how well you did to your friend and adds a competitive component to the single player mode. Blur allows players to post their stats or race results to twitter and facebook but it’s not like other games where they spam people’s twitter and facebook walls with updates, the player has to choose to post whatever they put on the wall manually.
Multiplayer includes online, 4-player split screen and system link. The multiplayer portion of Blur is where the fun is really at. Every match that I’ve played online was extremely fun and really intense where even if you come in 8th place out of 10 people you felt like you fought hard for that spot. In online multiplayer fans are still used as experience to level up and unlock things but the level is separate from the single player career mode. There are also online challenges that award extra fans when they are completed and there are also daily challenges that reset everyday and can give an extra boost to leveling up.
Racing online is split up into events like 10 and 20 player races, Motor Mash which is like a death match, team versions of those and racing without power ups. Team races are pretty interesting but can be frustrating since your teammates can block you from passing them up if they aren’t paying attention, thankfully there is no friendly fire from power ups. In multiplayer players can have 3 mods active at a time, sort of similar to Call of Duty’s perk system where each mod slot has its own unique mods. The way maps are chosen in the lobby is it’s left up to a vote between two maps and car classes so players don’t end up doing the same race over and over again.
Power Ups are a core element in Blur and there are plenty of them on every track. Players pick them up by driving over them and can hold up to 3 at a time. They can be toggled through and even dropped if you need to make room for another one. One of the more common power ups is the Shunt, a large energy ball that follows another racer until it hits or is destroyed. In Blur there are many ways to avoid power ups and defend yourself so they aren’t so over powered. For example; if you have a shunt hot on your tail the easiest thing to do would be to use the shield power up but if that’s not an option you could hit it with another power up by shooting them behind you or you can attempt to dodge it by making it hit another player or a wall. While there is no power up over powered like the blue shell in Mario kart there is one similar that puts up 3 electrical storms in front of whoever is in first place but they are small enough to be dodged. In addition to power ups there are Mods which can change or improve power ups and vehicles.
Blur boasts an impressive 55+ licensed realistic car line up with full damage modeling. Each car is divided up by their class from A to D with A being the fastest and D the slowest. Cars have basic stats such as Speed, Grip, Acceleration and Health. Most cars can have their colors changed and you can choose between different types of paints such as metallic but that’s the extent of the customization.
While single player can get boring after a couple of hours the multiplayer aspect of Blur is where the fun is really at. Blur is literally a blast to play and reminds me of when I played 4 player split screen Mario Kart 64 with my friends but a lot more intense. While every once in a while when in first place you may get hit by 4 power ups at once and die instantly this game is very balanced and provides hours of fun.
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Buy Blur for the Xbox 360 from EBGames.com at a great price!
