Split/Second

One day, a little company that could called Black Box came along and created one of the best, if not the best skateboarding game of all time called Skate. Then I did my research and found out that the company I'm actually looking for is called Blackrock. My bad. Blackrock is known for the under-appreciated and very kick ass game Pure, which funny enough was published by Disney Interactive, probably the last company you would expect to publish an ATV version of SSX. Instead of making a sequel to Pure (damn), Blackrock decided to make a good ol' fashion arcade racer - the kind of racer you would expect to find in an arcade somewhere, except more awesome. I haven't played an arcade racer this fun since the San Francisco Rush series, and despite being rated E10, I've blown up more shit than GTA4 and Just Cause 2 combine. Needless to say, I fuckin love this game.

The game is set up like one of those shows you would see on FOX, with the cheesy music ripped straight out of Jerry Bruckheimer's Ipod and everything. When you play through Season Mode, each stage is setup like an episode of the show. There are 12 episodes in all and 6 races (2 that have to be unlocked) in each episode. It doesn't sound like a lot, but you would be surprised how long it takes to complete it, especially if you gonna try to get 1st place in every single event. Shit the only thing missing from this game is the promos for a new season of House.

I guess the best way to decide this game is it's the love child between Burnout and...pretty much any and every game that has random shit exploding. At any moment, pieces of the environment can randomly attack you and the other racers, and these events are triggered by you and the other racers. You fill a meter by drifting, drafting, jumping, and other stunts, and once that meter is full enough, you can trigger one of these power plays when you have racers within range. There are 2 levels of power plays, and while level 1 normally gets the job done, level 2 is just ridiculously awesome. Trigger a level 2 and you can either cause an event that can take out pretty much everyone in the race, or take out pretty much everyone in the race AND fuck up the course so bad that you end up changing the route. As cool as they look, level 2 also takes the longest to build up, so it may not be the best option. Besides the usual race, elimination, and time trials, there are special events that you can do, one of them is seeing how long you can dodge missiles fired from a helicopter.

This is an arcade racers, and like all arcade racers it suffers from the same exact problem that causes people like me to curse every 5 minutes: unfair AI. No matter how far away you get, or how good you're driving, they will always catch up. A big lead doesn't mean shit in this game and eventually someone will be on your ass. I guess it was done to make the racing more exciting, but what's the point of trying so hard to get to first if I'm just gonna lose it anyway. Might as well just wait till the last lap to even try. Oh wait, you can't do that because that leads to you ending up in last. Unless you get a lucky sequence of power plays, if you're behind, you'll won't catch up. It's also worth noting that you won't win a lot later on until you know the courses, but the game is more fun when you have no idea what the course layout is, and shit is exploding around you. It's a conundrum.

Despite the AI, this game is kick ass, and is worthy of the company that produced Pure, and for the love of god, go out and get Pure. It's like 20 buck now and it kicks ass. Trust me on this. It's only fault is that there's no split screen multiplayer. I don't know why that was left out. It's not left in Split/Second though, so we're good there. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try it online because my internet is acting retarded, but maybe it'll work if and when I do my next VS: Split/Second vs. Blur. That should be fun.

[Update]: I was finally able to play the game online, and it's nothing special. I do like the fact that AI cars can be used to fill up the remaining spots, but other than that, there's not much to say about it. Playing with friends though is an absolute bitch! They have private race, but if you and a friend want to race against other people, who have to invite him into the lobby you're in and hope he gets in. There's no other way, at least no other way I can find. I tried an xbox live party, but that didn't do shit. Multiplayer is pretty much an afterthought in this case, and that's a damn shame because racing with a friend is fuckin hilarious. I originally gave this game a rating of fuckin awesome, but with online the way it is now, I have to knock it down one.


Rating: Sweet

NOTE: I like the running on the Backbreaker demo. Passing....not so much. Also, memo to ESPN, stop it with the fuck Lebron James coverage. Jesus Christ, if it's not him, it's fuckin Farve. Fuck both of them!