I try not to do too much geek blogging here, but it’s really what I am. So you’re going to get some of that in this post.
A buddy of mine checked out Split/Second the other weekend from the local library (yeah, you can do that!) and we gave it a spin. It’s fun. So I snagged a copy.
It’s an arcade racing game. So it’s not realistic at all. It’s a lot like the ATV racing game Pure in a lot of ways there which makes sense because it was done by the same studio.
The basic premise is you’re driving a car on a reality show and to make it entertaining for the folks at home there are explosions. Lots of explosions. You build up the ability to call up these explosions (“power plays”) by drafting behind other cars, drifting around corners, and getting your car airborne. But you can only call up explosions in some areas of the track (they’re usually no more than 10 seconds apart) and if you fire a “power play” on a car right in front of you, well, you’ve got to deal with it too. Some common power plays are helicopters that drop a depth charge looking thing, blowing up a semi-truck and sending the burning truck into the track, or collapsing a building onto the track. Once you’re up in 1st place all you can do is drive like mad and start dodging everything that the other players are tossing in your path.
It’s pretty simple to learn too. One trigger for gas, another for brake, steer with the analog stick, another button to call out a power play and one more to call out a “super” power play. That’s it — you don’t use half the buttons on a 360 controller. Once you go through the 5-10 minute tutorial at the very beginning you’ve got everything you need to know to start having fun.
The design is simple but lends itself to fun quite well. It’s a lot like the Mario Kart games in that if you can see the leader you’ve at least got a chance. Also, completely wrecking your car only puts you back 2-3 seconds in the race. So there’s no real reason to hold back and drive super cautious which keeps the action high.
One thing I don’t like are the shortcuts that you can activate using your power play points. The track will change temporarily (like a garage door opens or a bridge is lowered into place via a crane) and it goes away shortly after the person that ordered it up passes through. In multi-player this is going to heavily favor people that have played through the entire game a bunch of times. That’s not something I want in a dumbed-down arcade racer. I want it to be easily accessible by folks that don’t play often.
My other gripe is also related to multi-player. You’re pretty much going to have to play through all of the single player mode to have any regular fun with it because you need to do that to unlock all the cars. Pure is a lot the same way. Sure, you can jump online with the crappy default cars or ATVs in both games, but you’re not going to find many people in the same boat as you. So you either wait for ages finding players that are willing to play with crippled vehicles or jump into a game that you can’t possibly win. At least the single player mode is still fun, but you still have to put many hours into it and those hours aren’t always there for a guy that wants to just pop it in on Sunday evening to play online with his friends. Which is exactly what I bought the game for. I already know we’re going to have to restrict ourselves to the lowest level of vehicles when we play together because of that. Which is OK because it shouldn’t reduce the overall fun factor but it’s a bit annoying to pay for a game and have it not let you do everything possible in the multi-player world.
I was OK with that kind of thinking when I was like, 12, but gamers are getting older and the old tricks that used to work to keep us entertained and playing the game for hours on end are getting tired. Just put in a menu option to let us skip around the silly “locked” crap. All cars, every track, all race modes, all there right out of the box if we so choose.
But, that’s just me.
