The main reason why I've made this review is purely because of the review right below me, which complains about requiring a "separate video card" to play. But I'll get to that in a moment.
This is basically a fast paced arcade racer with powerups. Take a game like Gran Turismo and mix it in with some Mario Kart powerups, and you have this awesome, awesome game. The goal of the game is to drive around in your vehicle of choice, all of them real life cars, and basically blast each other to smithereens with powerups that are strewn throughout the track. Driving is VERY arcade style - you can accelerate, brake, and e-brake and you steer left and right. Handling is fairly straightforward. Cars handle very much like they do in Ridge Racer. Instead of getting busted up after just one hit from an attack, your car has a health meter, which goes down as you take hits from enemy attacks. If your health meter depletes, your car gets wrecked, and you're put out of commission for a short period. You can pick up powerups to repair your car back to full health so this doesn't happen, but that can get challenging when you have 19 other players trying to fight for first place. Yes you heard me, you can have up to 20 opponents racing simultaneously, both in single player and multiplayer mode!
That's the basic mechanics. Variety-wise, you have multiple modes you can choose from. You have Blur's equivalent of Last Man Standing, where your main goal is to just smash the daylights out of your opponents, racing, where you go around a track and try to get first place while fighting off attacks from your opponents, hardcore "simulation" racing, where powerups are disabled and your racing skills are put to the test, team modes, and much more.
Plus, the game has unlockables both in single player AND multiplayer mode which are earned through "bulbs" from placing as one of the top 3 in races and through fans you gain from blowing other cars up, completing in-course challenges, and doing fancy moves like drifts - these are basically more or less like points. You can actually play multiplayer LOCALLY (great LAN party game!), online, or even do a 4 player split screen with four controllers (freakin insane). As you gain fans and bulbs, you unlock more mods, more cars, and more courses and game modes to play. Since the unlockables are available for both single player and multiplayer modes, you'll have twice the amount of replayability, and you'll still have a very solid single player game even if you can't go multiplayer. The online play is dedicated, so you don't have to worry about the host getting any sort of ping advantage.
Oh, and this game has NO rubber band AI. If you get in front, however, expect to be attacked by the "blue shell" of this game, a powerup that drops 3 pits of lightning that will damage and slow down your car (but they can be dodged, unlike the blue shell). The AI is challenging because it is quite relentless in its aggression and will do whatever it takes to stop you from gaining first. They will smash into you, launch powerups, and gang up on you if it means they'll get past you. They'll dodge your attacks, purposely block you from picking up powerups, and generally do what a regular player will do to win. And if the action is too hard for you, you can dial down the difficulty to something a bit more manageable too.
Soundtrack is excellent, a bit of techno and rock mixed in. Nothing out of this world spectacular, but nothing that particularly bad. You'll be too busy spending most of your time smashing up other cars to really care.
Unfortunately, this game does not support a third party controller. It does support XBox 360 controllers. You can use 3rd party software out there to have your regular controller emulate a XBox 360 controller, however, and IMO this game definitely needs a gamepad for you to get the fullest out of it. The other problem here, however, is that the game doesn't allow you to customize the controls, only pick from a small set of preconfigured layouts, which is very un-PC-like. You can play this game on keyboard, and it's still very playable on it, so don't let the lack of direct third party controller support stop you!
Graphics are top notch. Everything looks well done, incredibly detailed, and very colorful. The cars look a little bit too shiny, and that fits in well with the overall theme of the game, which has more of a hyper-realistic/fantasy feel to it than it actually looking like real life. This makes sense, as the game lets you use powerups that you'll NEVER see in real life and be able to bust up expensive cars that we'll never get to drive. The game is also rather light on the graphics card; I'm running at full framerate with a GTX 260 at 1680 x 1050. Unfortunately, you can't tweak the graphics settings that much like you can in other games - you just have a general setting to adjust the visual detail and the ability to switch off or on fullscreen and vsync and change the antialiasing. That con makes the game feel like a somewhat not 100%-done PC port, since the game doesn't try that hard to take advantage of what makes the PC a unique gaming platform: the ability to run games at graphics settings that surpass that of their console counterparts.
Lastly, I'd like to address the poster below me who bought this game. This is a CURRENT GENERATION PC game that is meant for GAMERS. If you've never bought a PC game before, you will learn your first responsibility is to look up the system requirements, which are easily available online. If you want to play any half-decent PC game, you WILL need a separate graphics card (and not even a ridiculously expensive one!), which will allow you to play the game with graphics that will surpass those of the consoles. There are PC games out there that can work with integrated graphics cards, yes, but those are actually the *EXCEPTION* instead of the rule. Please, PLEASE do not rate this game one star for something you failed to look up yourself. For anyone else, buy this game! Although it lacks the configurability of most PC-native games, it's still fun, and is cheaper than its console versions. With the price drop on Amazon, it's actually cheaper to buy it here than Steam too!
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the following review is for the pc:
so i was looking forward to this game since a couple of months ago and what a disappointment. my friend tried it out and warned me it's terrible before i tried it. i was hoping it can be that bad, and boy was he right. so here goes the pros/cons
pros:
1. nice mix of tracks with multiple paths.
2. 20 cars per match
3. good amount of weapons
4. licensed cars looks good
cons:
1. where's the chaos? i was looking for some nice explosive destruction when i shoot cars with missiles, but they just end up skidding/slowing down?????!!! some items are just totally ineffective like the barge. i found myself rarely near the range of opponents to use it. since the 19 opponents are somewhat dispersed throughout the track, it feels more of a very short burst of invincibility like the gold star in mario kart that lasts 1 sec.
2. drifting. i myself prefer to use drift-type cars in many racing games. this game is not forgiving when u oversteer. when i oversteered and started to make a donut, the game automatically resetted my car. just a big double U tea eff!? the first time i was resetted, i thought somehow i was struck by something. then again and i realized it's the game. why would they implement such a thing to a racing game????
3. controls. simply terrible. no custom controls, no 3rd party controller support. only 2 preset keyboard or x360 controller support. laugh at this, preset #1, accel is Q and brake is A. turn is left/right arrow. WHAT???!!! how awkward is that setup? only preset #2 is worth using.
4. graphics. i had everything maxed using evga 8800gts so obviously it doesn't require much. the graphics just aren't as crisp as split second (which i enjoy playing over this).
in short, do not mix mario kart and need for speed into 1 game.
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(5 stars)I love this game. The weapons are very well balanced, most of them can be used for offensive or defensive counters, so you don't pick up useless weapons when you are in first place. The driving and feel of the cars is good, however the balance on them is skewed or maybe it's just me. The tutorial and tips say to tailor the car you have for the map, but I've found that picking the fastest, newest one always works the best, the drift/grip/speed concept doesn't really work out, so all the old cars become obsolete.
(-1 star)I do have a major gripe with the developer/publisher because of the so called "3rd party" (IE: NOT XBOX) controllers. If you have a PC game, take the time to make sure stuff works with it, or don't get into deals with MS to try and rip people off. The good news is that you can use an Xbox control emulator. [...]
Really hope they get a patch out that has controller support without needing to work around it.
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The game is worth the $20 i paid for it, its fast, fun and challenging. Single player mode is difficult in some areas of the game. On-line multiplayer is a blast with friends. there is no voice chat or text chat in game. needs a anti-cheat system incorporated, online play has become riddled with cheaters now. It could stand some DLC in the future. over all tho, the game is fun. what more can I say here that you can't find online in 100 other reviews and video's.
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I played the demo of Blur on Xbox 360 and enjoyed it and was going to get it for that or PS3 when it came out but I have a beefy PC too so once I saw the $20 price difference it was a no brainer so picked it up for PC. Game plays amazing, and it's a ton of fun. It's a lot like a Mario Kart for adults, or a re-imagination of that old 3DO pack in game Crash N Burn which is still one of my favorite racers ever. It has amazing graphics, runs perfectly smooth at 40-50fps cranked up @ 1920x1200 on my quad core Q9650, 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX 285, on Windows 7 64bit. The online play works great too and has enough people playing to always be able to hop on and find some fellow gamers to play with. Also I'm using a PS3 dualshock gamepad with it hooked up to USB and using MotionJoy software that allows that to work and it works perfect as I expected it would. The gameplay gets pretty challenging too about halfway in but that's a good thing in my opinion, I like a challenge. Some really awesome looking tracks too, especially the one on the boardwalk at night with fireworks and wet dirt and pavement, very cool.
Definitely a must buy for racing fans, highly recommended!
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This seems to be a racing season. A number of new racing games have been or are to be released. But not all GTs are created equal.
Only last week I was playing Split/Second and now the long awaited BLUR is out. Since both games are more Arcade-racers than Simulators, I decided to do a side-by-side review.
What BLUR has over SPLIT/SECOND:
(a) Licensed cars. Fantasy cars look great but it is always more satisfying to drive real supercars. Yes, that means you have to start with the obligatory stupid compacts - but good ones get unlocked soon.
(b) Much better music. Disney simply dropped the ball here, SPLIT/SECOND is in dire need for some epic music to go with the blockbuster mentality.
(c) You have a map that shows both your and your opponents' positions, something I would have liked in SPLIT/SECOND.
(d) More realistic damage (keyword: "more"). SPLIT/SECOND crashes are realistically spectacular but you can body-slam anything forever and the only thing that shows are some...scratches. BLUR is no simulator but it is more realistic (for a game that offers power-up repairs that is) - unless you dislike driving a car with its rear spoiler hanging out.
(e) You get a usable rear-view mirror (for as long as you can keep it from cracking). In SPLIT/SECOND you have to use the NUM-2 to sneak a peak back - and risk crashing since you cannot look both ways.
(f) No rubber-band AI. You earn a margin, you get to keep it. It may be less thrilling all the time but it saves you the aggravation of driving your heart out only to loose the No.1 position by a cheap pass at the very last second.
On the other hand, this is where I found SPLIT/SECOND to be better than BLUR:
(a) Much more spectacular driving. Drifting, drafting, jumping and, of course, exploding things is simply so much better than activating a white shield or firing some feeble electric charges.
(b) Better designed and larger tracks that can even be modified during a race.
(c) Less complicated. In SPLIT/SECOND you just drive, drop an exploding truck (or an entire...freeway) onto your opponents and avoid the same happening to you. In BLUR you have to choose and pick up power-ups (max of 3), select the next one, aim and fire at your target; you have to pick up and use the repair power-up to maintain the health of your car; you have to drive through a number of yellow gates to win over fans in order to unlock more cars; and then you have to earn lights to advance (I guess it had to be something, but ..."lights"?).
(d) Customizable controls. Come on ACTIVISION, this is not 1995, why do we have to use both ends of the keyboard to drive a car? Turn left and right with the L/R arrows yet accelerate and brake with the Q- and A-keys? And someone though this to be such a good idea that there is no customization option? Well, now you know what must be included in the next patch.
Different gamers have, of course, different preferences, so some of the above mentioned aspects may weight differently to everyone. Both games harbor SecuROM disk-checks, so their DRM scheme is comparable.
Nevertheless, in the end, where I think BLUR clearly lags behind SPLIT/SECOND is the pure fun factor. I know this is subjective but I enjoyed SPLIT/SECOND much more than I did BLUR.
I would never though the day would come that I would be recommending a ...Disney game over an Activision one.
But life is full of surprises.
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Positives:
Good graphics and nice selection of cars.
Easy to use Menu. Some of the menu videos get annoying - but you only have to watch them once.
non-annoying Music. This is my opinion only - but I thought Dirt 2 had terrible music. This music is more techno-based. I think that fits racing better. But again, there is my personal preference.
Negatives:
The controls are really weird for a keyboard interface. Sure, you can get used to it. But be forewarned.
Activision needs to work on their customer service. Their online code they provided didn't work. I found no help online and calling the company didn't provide much help either. They told me to "buy a new game". That's not happening.
NOTE FOR RACING FANS - this game is not "true" racing. This game is about looking for power-ups to blast your competition. You will find the track and turns are the last thing on your mind because people are launching attacks at you. Most of the tracks aren't challenging to drive.
The loading is a bit slow - but this may be fixed by a patch later. I built my computer for high demand gaming. So I was surprised at some of the loading times. Again, their first patch will probably fix this. But it's still something to be aware of.
Conclusion:
I've been buying racing games for years. Blur doesn't challenge my inner perfectionist racer. It's not about accurate control or turns. This game is easy driving - but you have people launching missiles at you. It's amusing for the first 30 minutes or so. But long term - you have to play online.
If you have friends online to play with - I think this game is good idea. I hate all forms of online gaming so that's not a big draw for me. If you want challenging driving go with Grid, Dirt 2, or Split Second.
So, if you like the arcade racing games, go for it. If you would prefer a tad more realism, try another game.
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I found this game kind of boring and repetitious very quickly. Not much else to say about it. It is a poor console port.
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Normally, I don't write a review, but I really hope to save other people the $35. There is a lot of potential in this game, but unfortunately the problems on the PC version of the game are crippling. From what many other people have been saying (here and elsewhere), you're probably best off with an XBOX version of this game.
I got the game shortly after it was released in May. Here we are two months later and no substantial patches to the PC version. The multiplayer base is still at a maximum of 200 players at any given time during the day.
The reasons for the lack of a thriving multiplayer experience have been mentioned in other reviews:
--- Total and complete lack of voice or even text chat in the lobbies. This is a HUGE problem.
--- The problems with setting up controls. I have to use 3rd party software to program my wireless controller to keyboard keys.
--- Frames Per Second problems when there are a lot of cars on the track or on certain tracks. I've had the game come to a complete halt for 5 seconds on one track. My rig is well beyond the recommended requirements; this should not be happening.
And if you think the singleplayer will redeem the game, no not really. I blew through it in about 2 days.
All in all, I feel ripped off for buying this game. They really didn't put much effort into porting this for PC. If they fix the problems with it sometime in the future, it would totally redeem itself. But until then, I'll just play something else and free up my hard drive space.
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I have a Saitek gamepad P2500. I though that this is 2010 and the gamepad should have no problem playing. I was wrong. The developers of this game want you to race on the keyboard.
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My son has been anticipating this game since its initial release date of Nov.3 was announced. We received it, finally, today, after two reschedules. His excitement at this was very short, though. This site says only that we need Windows XP or Vista. Okay, so far. The package says Intel Pentium Dual Core. Still okay. But 3.4 GHz? And it needs a seperate video card. Amazon, could you at least have mentioned those details in the specs? It installs on his laptop, but will not run. We are all disappointed, and wasted the money. Package opened...can't return it?
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