Nukezilla Review: Blur (Xbox 360)

Blur is a videogame collage, an original work pieced together from other racing games. It combines real cars, unrealistic handling, power-ups and tracks based on real-world locations. This unique combination is wrapped in a futurist aesthetic and a twin-track progression mechanic. As well as straightforward races, the game also features checkpoint and destruction events. The former requires the player to hit gates and speed boosts to finish a race within a time limit. The latter tasks the player with collecting power-ups to take out an endless pack of AI-controlled racers.Winning these events and meeting certain in-race requirements nets the player lights and fans. Lights advance the player through the games leagues and fans unlock new cars and car modifications.

On a race-by-race basis, I had a lot of fun with Blur. The handling model gives a great sense of barely controlling a powerful vehicle at high speeds and the power-up based combat gives the races a chaotic intensity. These qualities shine through in the online multiplayer component. Races of up to 20 players can turn into spectacular, high-speed bloodbaths as each player litters the track with mines and pillars of lightning or blasts their opponent with a guided explosive.

If Blur’s frantic races are it’s alluring perfume then the horrible, frustrating structure is it’s incurable halitosis. For me, it came close to ruining the single player experience. At first, I was fine with having to unlock new leagues and cars by performing well in the events. I wasn’t getting perfect results in each event but I still earned a decent amount of fans and lights. I felt as if I was genuinely improving my performance when I retried an even a couple of times, my lap times decreasing with each attempt. Eventually though, I hit a brick wall. Around 80% of my way through the single player campaign, I just couldn’t do well enough to unlock the last couple of leagues.

It wasn’t that the events themselves were too challenging, I was still placing in the top three on each race. It’s that the methods by which extra lights and fans are earned are so arcane and counter-intuitive that frustrated me. For example, each league is topped off by a one-on-0ne race against a special opponent. These races account for around 1/7th of the lights and fans available in each league. I couldn’t even attempt these races because of how frustratingly specific their entry requirements are. Some require you to perform a very specific action, only possible in particular circumstances, on multiple occasions. As enjoyable as the game’s mechanics are, I’m just not willing to grind my way through race after race to unlock these events. As a result, a sizeable chunk of the game is off limits to me.

This progression mechanic seeps in to the online component of the game. Although all the tracks are available, the cars and ability enhancing ‘mods’ have to be unlocked. Losing a race because you didn’t have access to your opponents car is just plain frustrating. It didn’t make me want to keep playing and unlocking new vehicles as the developer clearly intended. Instead it made me want to go and play a game that wasn’t so hell-bent on wasting my time.

In short, Blur is a game who’s structure casts a long shadow over its content. If you can dig through that structure, there’s a fantastic racing game waiting for you. A game that gripped me during its races and at some points threatened to unseat Wipeout HD as my arcade racer of choice. Blur is like a magnificent castle surrounded by a moat filled with toxic waste, sharks and sewage. I can’t deny the majesty of its architecture, I’m just not willing to swim through all that crap to get inside.

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