BLUR: Gets your pulse racing

FULL REVIEW

I’ve never quite understood the fascination people have for Mario Kart-esque racing games but after spending some quality time with Blur, I ‘m a staunch believer. Blur comes to us from Bizarre Creations, the same dudes behind the Project Gotham Racing series and fuses power up arcade racing with urban street racing to create a near perfect blend of strategy, white knuckled driving and pure adrenaline.

Like most racing games on the block you’re an unknown street racer who wants to make it to the top. To do so you’ll have to wade through the game’s nine tiers consisting of seven races each. Once you’re done with all the races in a particular tier, you can tee off against that tier’s boss provided you fulfill all of his/her conditions that could include anything from destroying a hundred cars to dodging an ‘x’ amount of incoming attacks and so on. After that it’s a pink slip race where the winner walks away with the loser’s pimped out ride.

Since power up racing is the game’s USP it is imperative for you to learn how to use the power ups strewn all over the maps wisely. For this you’ll obviously have to learn the power up associated with a particular icon. After that it’s just a matter of time before survival instinct takes over and you begin to figure out which power up is best suited for a particular situation.

In most racers leading the pack means you’re pretty much cruising your way to the finish line with little effort. In the world of Blur however, it’s a totally different ball game. In fact I would say that staying at the front of the pack is one of the most intense racing experiences ever, as you’re not only frantically trying to reach the finish line, but avoiding a bunch of attacks that come your way from the rest of the pack. Thankfully the game allows you to retaliate aggressively as most power ups can be fired backward as well. Be warned though; this game can get extremely tough after the first few tiers so if you find your ass handed to you, time and time again don’t feel shy about bumping down the difficulty a notch.

The single player campaign of Blur – while lengthy is nothing but a glorified tutorial for the game’s online modes. Unfortunately there aren’t too many servers up at this point (for the PC version at least) but even in a scarcely populated server of four players things get extremely intense. The game’s managed to incorporate a persistent unlock system synonymous with popular shooters like Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. What this basically means is that playing online and kicking ass will reward you with a bunch of unlocks that can enhance the driving and fighting capabilities of your car.

As you can see Blur offers a huge bang for your buck with a fairly lengthy single player campaign and highly entertaining multiplayer that’ll keep you busy for days on end. Sure the game suffers from a bit of an erratic difficulty curve but that’s no excuse to deprive yourself from one of the most enjoyable racers out there.