'Powered-up racing' is a pretty generic tagline, yet Blur is anything but. While the game is advertised as a grown-up version of Mario Kart, Bizarre Creations has built something far more fun and complex than a one-off kart racer. From the glow and shooting of Geometry Wars to the tight controls and Kudos system of Project Gotham Racing, the developer’s pedigree is instantly apparent, as Blur brilliantly marries multiple sub-genres into one awesomely chaotic package. Impressively, this combination is balanced, allowing the distinct gameplay types to merge and form a racer that is both unique and exciting.
Blur is a ridiculously fast game, and the speed isn't just defined by an onscreen gauge. Simultaneously keeping track of all of the converging mechanics is what makes the game so frantic, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming. But that's why Blur stands out: every race reaches max intensity right from the get go. Licensed cars are mixed with a medley of items (homing missile, shield, boost, the works), and it's not enough to just follow the racers in front of you. You've got to swerve around incoming projectiles, dodge mines, and pick up nitro, all while staying on course. Navigating brutal turns and anticipating forked paths becomes twice as tough with power-ups flying in from every direction. You can store up to three items, adding an element of strategy to your attack (I always like to have a Repair in reserve), and there is never a moment to relax. For some, this manic pace won't be enjoyable. In the larger twenty car races, it's very likely that you'll be hit with consecutive power-ups, and you may be stuck in thirteenth place the whole way through. Yet, overcoming the many ever-present threats makes victory all the more satisfying.
The main career mode is divided into groups of challenges, each led by a boss of sorts. These circuits culminate in a one-on-one with the aforementioned racer (awarding you with a power-up mod, bestowing stronger missiles or more effective shields upon your arsenal), but reaching that battle isn't achieved by merely finishing first. Sure, you'll need to win a few events to collect ‘lights’, Blur's neon-themed point system, but boss races are unlocked via specific demands. These range from wrecking a certain number of cars to drifting for a specified distance. You could probably advance through all the groups of tracks by solely winning races and collecting lights, disregarding the whole boss thing, but taking on the dozens of unique demands keeps the racing fresh. When first place isn't the only goal, you can have fun with the process, regardless of your finish time.
Boss demands aside, Blur’s campaign is incredibly challenging, with some events requiring double-digits attempts. Surprisingly, I wasn't frustrated. There are tons of tracked objectives, and every race equals progress towards these mini-goals, no matter if you make the podium or not. Besides finishing first or getting the top score, each event also offers the opportunity to collect Fans, a make believe currency you gain for doing almost anything. Taking out opponents, overtaking leaders, and chaining power-ups all contribute to your total, eventually resulting in new cars as you ‘level up’ throughout the career.
While you’ll get the most lights for finishing in the top three, there are two per event tied to specific Fan challenges. Fan Runs are self-explanatory: drive through ten or so brightly lit gates. Completing the Fan Targets is a lot more free form, tasking you with gaining a certain number of Fans over the course of the event. Later circuits include Fan Demands, in-race challenges that give free items and encourage you to execute a maneuver within a short time frame (hit someone while drifting or nitro overtake another racer, for example). Boosting your Fan total isn’t too tough, but the kicker is that you need to finish near the top for these lights to count.
The game opens with mostly races, though the introduction of Destruction and Checkpoint events helps to spread out the variety. Time trials are nothing new, but the Checkpoint races build on the power-up theme by requiring players to collect stopwatches to keep the clock ticking. Should you take the best line, or swerve around in attempts to boost your clock? It all depends on your car and your style. Destruction is a fast-moving battle mode, with targets constantly racing around the track. Not only do you need to hit these cars to score points, you've got to follow the track and maintain a solid speed to keep enemies in view. The beauty of Blur is in its overlapping of modes, always requiring you to focus on two or three different things.
In terms of locations, the courses are varied, though some do share both scenery and portions of track. Yet, whereas in a multi-path game like Motorstorm I'm incredibly concerned with memorizing the quickest route, Blur doesn't allow you to concentrate on the course for half as long. You'll be so concerned with incoming missiles and reaching that nitro boost in the corner, that the tracks are there to service the gameplay far more than they are to stand out as memorable highlights. The assortment is decent, with narrow city roads and sprawling dirt expanses requiring separate strategy and different car types. There’s a distinct difference in the handling feel of drifty sports cars in comparison to grippy SUVs, and thankfully, a slower vehicle can win out against a speed demon given proper management of corners and power-ups.
Multiplayer increases the madness, adding full-on leveling and loadouts. Just like in career mode, everything you do boosts your Fan total. You level up, collect cars, and acquire a whole slew of mods (which are much more intricate than their single player counterparts), as well as open new modes and playlists. And if online isn’t your thing, Blur offers four-player split-screen, a welcome addition to the hi-def racing catalogue.
With so many cars on the track, the potential for power-up barrages is high, and Blur feels incredibly unfair when you're wrecked three times on a single straightaway. But after dozens of hours of both single and multiplayer, I've found the game to be amazingly well tuned. Due to the variety of ways in which you can advance up the leaderboard, experience, skill, and luck all mesh together to form a balance that doesn't guarantee victory for the guy with the fastest car or highest level.
If you can’t tell already, Blur can get pretty complicated. The game features real cars, and controls as well as you'd expect a more grounded racer to control. The power-ups are straight out of kart racers, and demand constant swerving and aiming. And to top it off, the amount and variety of challenges makes Blur seem like Modern Warfare on wheels. It's a lot to stomach all at once, and for the first hour or so, I consistently finished in the middle of the pack. But if you can get over that initial hump, you'll find yourself absorbed in the craziest racer this generation.
