[360/PS3/PC] Blur Review

[Psykoboy2]

Blur Review

Title: Blur
Platform: Xbox 360*, PS3, PC
Developer: Bizarre Creations
Publisher: Activision
ESRB: Everyone 10+
MSRP: $59.99 (360/PS3) $39.99 (PC)
Editor: Scott 'Psykoboy2' Benton

What's Hot: The Multiplayer is where this game shines. Imagine if Mario Kart could be played online with a leveling system and addictiveness of the first Modern Warfare and that's what you'll find here.

What's Not: The single player has a few issues in that it's short, but it also seems to have a hard time finding a sweet spot in the difficulty. Plus there's at least 2 online game modes that just don't work as they should, although that will hopefully be patched soon.

Kart Racing: Evolved.

If you’ve ever played Mario Kart then you have, essentially, played Blur, the first effort from Bizarre Creations under their new parent company, Activision. Mario Kart is THE best comparison I can give you, mainly because I have played no other kart games, and I can tell you right now that if you’ve ever enjoyed playing Mario Kart, you’ll likely enjoy Blur just as much.

In the same way that a few new games lately have been love letters, so to speak, to the generations of games before it, Blur sends its love to the Mario Kart franchise. All the homage you need is in the power ups you pick up on the track as you race. You’ve got:

• The shunt: a red, glowing orb that hones in on targets
• The bolt: 3 bullets of energy that fire in a straight line
• The nitro: a short blast of speed
• The barge: a blast of energy surrounding your car that deals damage to anyone in close range
• The mine: a glowing orange ball of energy just waiting for you to hit it
• The shield: a bubble of protection not only against the power ups being fired at you, but also against the damage of hitting walls or other drivers
• The blue she…I mean the shock: 3 blue bolts of lightning that litter the track in front of the lead pack – avoidable, but almost impossible once three or more people in the race let loose with this power up (pro-tip: keep a nitro handy and when the lightening gets tough, slow down to let others take the damage and clear a path, then boost through back to the lead).

As much as I’ve already mentioned Mario Kart in this review, what you won’t find in the game is the karts. It’s kart combat all right, but with real cars. There’s around 70 licensed cars in the game (less than that if you don’t count the different versions of the same model), each with different speed, acceleration, handling, and strength. While in some arcade racers of this type cars all feel the same, Blur’s vehicles can sometimes be the key to winning an event. Some are suited for off-road while others can easily take you through winding roadways. The tracks consist of real world locations (14 locations with around 30 track variations total) and sometimes have different paths and shortcuts to take.

The offline campaign of Blur is divided into 9 sections each containing 6 events. You progress by earning “lights”. A top spot in any event will gain you 5 lights. Lights are only good for unlocking the 9 sections of the campaign. To do much more than that, you need fans. The fan aspect of Blur is essentially your XP. You gain fans by using power ups on the track and performing any number of different feats such as drifts, air, driving under a car you just shunted and so on. Also during events you can trigger on-track challenges called “fan demands” and “fan runs” that will gain you even more fans.

Now, before I begin talking about my experience with the single player portion of Blur, I feel I should let you in on a little something about me – I’m a bit OCD when it comes to my racing games. I’m a stickler to finish first in every race or at least reach whatever goal is set before me in the top position, be it a time trial or some other task. Blur’s single player campaign tested my resolve and put me in the position to accept whatever place I rank, so long as I can rank and move on. I didn’t really like that so, on a whim, I decided to lower the difficulty. Now, I can come in first in every race, but it puts me so far ahead of the pack that I can’t do anything worthy of gaining any fans. There doesn’t seem to be any type of middle ground. You either suck it up with the medium difficulty and come to terms that you can’t win’em all or you go easy, in which case you can win them all, but you won’t have any fun doing it.

Needless to say, I haven’t really warmed to the single player part of the Blur experience. In fact, I would say the best part of the single player experience is the friend challenges. These are awesome! After finishing any event in single player, I can issue a challenge to up to 3 friends on my friends list. The next time they play the game, they’ll be notified that I have challenged them and can accept or decline. Should they accept, all the conditions will be the same as when I issued the challenge – difficulty, car, track, everything will be set the same as it was for me so they can try and beat my time, fan count, place finish, etc. And where’s the fun in just issuing the challenge within the game? Blur has integrated Facebook and Twitter features to let me share pretty much anything I am doing at anytime over those social networks. It’s a whole lot more fun to issue challenges publicly so all my friends can see whom I’m calling out (and their friends too).

That’s about the only saving grace of the single player portion of the game for me. As it is now, it feels more like a place to play around in while waiting for my friends to come online so we can party up in the multiplayer side of things.

Multiplayer is the reason I own Blur. It’s the first thing I did after installing the game. The only other game I have done that with previous is Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. And there’s good reason for that. There is an unbelievable amount of addictiveness within the multiplayer portion of this game. Sure, it’s online racing and leveling up and that’s all there is to it essentially, but it’s enough to keep me coming back again and again. To go back to the Mario Kart comparison, how many hours did you spend playing that game with friends over at your place. If it’s anything like me and the guys from IGC, hours upon hours would pass and we’d still be playing that game and it’s different multiplayer mode types. The same applies here.

Multiplayer has 8 modes of play. There’s Skirmish Racing that pits you against up to 9 other players. This is more about racing with the power ups than any other mode in multiplayer. Having 10 or less people on the track will really test your skill. While the next mode, Powered-Up Racing, has you go against a field of up to 20 people. Don’t get me wrong, the code handles it well and everything runs quite smoothly even with a full 20 person room. However, racing becomes less about skill and more about the power ups. Either one works for me though, to be honest, and these two modes are where I spend most of my online play. The next mode is Motor Mash. This is your Twisted Metal portion of the online play. The “balloon battle” from Mario Kart. It isn’t about racing in Motor Mash, nope, the point of this mode is destruction. The next two modes are Team Racing and Team Motor Mash. Currently, this mode seems to have issues. I was only ever able to get in one good race, while any other attempts resulted in disconnects and even system hard locks. For you pure racing fans, there’s a multiplayer mode for you called Hardcore Racing. This is strictly you against other drivers. No power ups are involved in this mode. There’s also a Community Events mode that allows you to set custom options for racing. And finally, there’s the World Tour which gives you completely random tracks, cars and modes of play.

On top of all that, you gain fans during your races that allow you to level up in the multiplayer mode unlocking new cars, new modes of play, and mods. Mods are to Blur what perks are in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare. You can equip these to your car before the start of the race. There are mods for all types of situations and you can equip three at a time. There’s a mod that allows your shield to last longer and take more damage than usual. Another that will equip a laser sight for your shunt power up. And even another that will give you a power up at random at the beginning of a race.

The sound of the game is well mixed, especially where the power ups and car FX are concerned. The more close your car is to being wrecked, the more you can hear it rattle and scrape the ground with a busted fender or bumper. The music is really only ever heard during the menu screens and seems to be very low key. I say that because of how little of an opinion I have on it. I just don’t seem to recall it ever sticking out to me during game play (except for the beautiful opening cinematic and it’s brilliant choice of music).

The look of the game isn’t quite up to par with Bizarre’s previous series, Project Gotham Racing, but given how that was closer to a sim and this is closer to an arcade racer, the look fits. And again, as with the sound, the effects really shine with the power-ups. If you need proof, pause the game after firing or landing a hit with the shunt and enter photo mode. It’s in the pudding, as they say.

Bizarre has a winner on their hands with Blur. But if you only ever plan to play the single player part of the game, this likely isn’t for you. The single player is short and there’s very little to do when you’re done other than the friend challenges, and that only works if you have friends playing the game. The multiplayer however will keep me coming back for more while the friend challenges will be about the only thing to keep me coming back to the single player portion, if only to battle back and forth with people on my friends list. It’s got some issues with a few of the multiplayer modes, and while almost everyone spends their time in the modes that work (skirmish, powered-up, and motor mash), it’d be nice to see something fixed for those other modes


Score: 3.5 out of 5 CoGs


Scott says, "It says something when I can find more enjoyment online with your game than I can offline. Regardless of the two broken team modes online, I think it should be pretty equal in that I enjoy both or, at the very least, the single player rises above the multiplayer in the fun factor, but that's just not the case here. The single player part of Blur isn’t worth the asking price or the frustration, personally, but the multiplayer is the saving grace of the game and the reason I keep coming back. I only wish I could have the same fun offline as I do online."

*Note - Review based upon the Xbox 360 version of the game.

[menage]

Don't know what it is, but Bizarre aren't really good at getting me interested in their games just on looks alone. Like the Club. Interesting concept, just looks way boring.

Sure gameplay is king, but since we're supposed to play it a lot online i don't think they put out the visuals I needed. And the lack of a decent sp kills it for me. I'd rather put in Burnout Paradise again.

[Deadend]

It's a pity that the game shipped broken, as from the beta-test the track design was excellent and the item placement was great as well.

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by Deadend

It's a pity that the game shipped broken, as from the beta-test the track design was excellent and the item placement was great as well.

Everything you played in the beta works in the retail release (I don't think the two broken team modes were available in the beta).

As I mentioned, those two modes of play are broken right now, but it doesn't bother me, personally, since all I ever play are the two main racing modes.

[ShadokatRegn]

I think it's nice that they had the multiplayer beta to really polish that aspect - but I'm disappointed that the single player is so short. In many respects this is the most fun I've had in a "racing" game since Mario Kart 64/Episode 1 Racer, but the length of the single player should be a lot more.

Hopefully with the availability of DLC, they'll add more cars, more tracks, challenges, etc in the future. Nice read though, I agree whole-heartedly.

[ElektroDragon]

I think it deserves a 4.5 out of 5. The SP feels long enough to me, especially given the very high difficulty of Medium after the first stage. I have to lower the difficulty to Easy for certain events. I didn't encounter anything "broken" about this game. They just chose, poorly, to make Medium too hard, and Easy too Easy.

Now Split/Second, that has a very broken MP system where it can not only lock your console, but you need to finish the SP or buy a DLC pack to even be competitive online. Blur is far more balanced in MP. I give the SP crown to Split Second by a hair, but for MP, it's no contest, and Blur dominates.

Owning both games, and having played both for about 20 hours each, I find Blur to be the more addictive title.

Also, this is not a very careful review. If you want awesome music during your races, you need to go into Options and turn on the Licensed Soundtrack. That will give you some killer tunes during the races!

[roboninja]

So, does this have 4-person local MP? That is a deal-breaker for a racer for me.

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by roboninja

So, does this have 4-person local MP? That is a deal-breaker for a racer for me.

Yep, its got 4 player split screen local Multi.

[Ghostbear]

Good review Scott, of course I am inclined to like since I own it already

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by ElektroDragon

I think it deserves a 4.5 out of 5. The SP feels long enough to me, especially given the very high difficulty of Medium after the first stage. I have to lower the difficulty to Easy for certain events. I didn't encounter anything "broken" about this game. They just chose, poorly, to make Medium too hard, and Easy too Easy.

Now Split/Second, that has a very broken MP system where it can not only lock your console, but you need to finish the SP or buy a DLC pack to even be competitive online. Blur is far more balanced in MP. I give the SP crown to Split Second by a hair, but for MP, it's no contest, and Blur dominates.

Owning both games, and having played both for about 20 hours each, I find Blur to be the more addictive title.

Also, this is not a very careful review. If you want awesome music during your races, you need to go into Options and turn on the Licensed Soundtrack. That will give you some killer tunes during the races!

So, I had a tough time picking the score. The single player being short for me and having the issues with the difficulty (which I think is different for everyone, to be honest) had me take a point away. That takes it from being a 5 out of 5 right there. So there I was with a four and we've got the two online modes that just can't sustain play for very long, but that HAS to be patched eventually, right? So a half point deducted there. And only really half since most of my 6 hours playing was spent in the two race modes online that the majority of people are playing right now anyway.

So that's my scoring reason.

Going back to the difficulty, some people may like a challenge like that, but I didn't. It isn't broken, by any means. The ONLY thing broken are those two team multiplayer modes. I can attest to that along with everyone in the room who got kicked or had a hard lock happen. We made several attempts to play that and I've seen it reported elsewhere how those two modes are unplayable. But other than that, there's nothing else broken about the game. The difficulty isn't broken, but it isn't working for me and there was issue about that in how to approach it in the review since I think difficulty is widely a different experience for everyone who plays the game. I'm used to being challenged in racing games, but always to a point of learning the tracks and the cars. As much as I tried I just couldn't come away in a satisfying position on Medium and well, easy could let me place but I could never get the fan demands since I was so far ahead of the pack and there was no fun driving alone.

I tried very hard not to compare this to Split/Second since Split/Second couldn't be compared to Blur when it was reviewed. Also, I have played VERY little of Split/Second. I think I just got done with Episode 2 and I haven't played ANY of the online stuff with it yet, so I didn't feel right in comparing the two, but I've heard the same with what you said.

I'm addicted to Blur, I really am, but only for the multiplayer and friend challenges and only when I have friends on to play with.

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by ShadokatRegn

I think it's nice that they had the multiplayer beta to really polish that aspect - but I'm disappointed that the single player is so short. In many respects this is the most fun I've had in a "racing" game since Mario Kart 64/Episode 1 Racer, but the length of the single player should be a lot more.

Hopefully with the availability of DLC, they'll add more cars, more tracks, challenges, etc in the future. Nice read though, I agree whole-heartedly.

Thanks! The single player being short is really only related to your style of play, I suppose. I mean, for me, it was first or nothing. Top spot with all my little side challenges complete as well and it would take so very many attempts and restarts to make this happen. At some points, I'd stop trying and just accept whatever I came away with, but I hated to do that. Still, if that doesn't frustrate you and you want to make those attempts, that'll definately increase your amount of time spent in SP, but all it ever did for me was make me angry. I don't need to get that kind of angry with a video game. Or, at least, a racing title.

Originally Posted by Ghostbear

Good review Scott, of course I am inclined to like since I own it already

And because you are rooming with me at E3.

[roboninja]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

Yep, its got 4 player split screen local Multi.

Awesome. Sounds like this is my next purchase. I was going to go with Split Second, but I think this sounds better overall.

[ShadokatRegn]

Originally Posted by roboninja

Awesome. Sounds like this is my next purchase. I was going to go with Split Second, but I think this sounds better overall.

From what I understand, Split/Second is good as well, but Blur has a lot more originality with it. And, with how much I've heard about the rubberband AI, I'd steer clear of Split/second, even if it didn't make me incredibly motion sick.

[Telefrog]

I want to get this, but the current flood of great gaming is keeping this on the "wait for a price drop" list.

[AniAko]

I was convinced I was buying Split/Second, and renting Blur... it's now the other way around. I think the rating you gave it Scott was spot on, and it was a great low down on what to expect from the game.

That being said, I wasn't convinced until I played a bunch of races in the Blur beta, that's Bizzare Creation's and Activision's fault as far as I see it.

[Psykoboy2]

Originally Posted by ShadokatRegn

From what I understand, Split/Second is good as well, but Blur has a lot more originality with it. And, with how much I've heard about the rubberband AI, I'd steer clear of Split/second, even if it didn't make me incredibly motion sick.

I kept wondering what the name "Split/Second" implied in a game about blowing up the environments and everything. Turns out, it's how you finish first in the game. First place will NEVER come easy and sometimes, you'll never be sure you actually finished first until it's over.

Originally Posted by Telefrog

I want to get this, but the current flood of great gaming is keeping this on the "wait for a price drop" list.

Blur's multiplayer will determine it's longevity. Hopefully the community supports it and continues to play it, but as with anything when Online Multi dominates a reason for owning a game, that portion could fade by the time you get this.

Originally Posted by AniAko

I was convinced I was buying Split/Second, and renting Blur... it's now the other way around. I think the rating you gave it Scott was spot on, and it was a great low down on what to expect from the game.

Thanks. The score was the last thing I did with the review. It was totally written from top to bottom, but the score was still blank. I really had a hard time with it. I LOVE this game, online anyway and I couldn't feel that that one aspect could warrant a near perfect score. Especially with 2 broken online game modes (at the very least - never tried the community mode).

[Telefrog]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

Blur's multiplayer will determine it's longevity. Hopefully the community supports it and continues to play it, but as with anything when Online Multi dominates a reason for owning a game, that portion could fade by the time you get this.

Yeah, I know. It's one of those gambles.

I'm too busy with RDR and Snoopy (of all things) right now, both of which have pretty stellar multiplayer.

[Chimpbot]

Originally Posted by Telefrog

Yeah, I know. It's one of those gambles.

I'm too busy with RDR and Snoopy (of all things) right now, both of which have pretty stellar multiplayer.

Blur is, for the time being, my go-to console multiplayer title. I've gotten hit hard with RDR's connectivity issues; one evening, I'd get booted from free roam immediately after loading finished...at which point it would remain on the loading screen until I quit to the dashboard. After this repeating four or seven times, I gave up.
Blur, on the other hand, gave me no issues. I got dropped once in three hours, which could have been caused by a variety of reasons.
I've had better luck with RDR since, but I still get dropped too often. The multiplay doesn't exist for me until its fixed.

[Telefrog]

I've been pretty lucky with RDR so far. I haven't been dropped once, and I only had the disappearing stuff glitch on the first day.