Blur Hands-on
Bizarre Creations composes its Song 2.
UK, May 19, 2009 - A mob of neon-clad kids wave glowsticks as they gather on the bridge over Shoreditch High Street, the light projectors they've set up describing flashing chevrons on the barfronts of East London's self-professed capital of cool. They're here to see an ad-lib street race, having found details of the event through a Facebook for petrolheads and, on-cue, a gaggle of cars race up Hackney Road to Haggerston Park, leaving bright phosphorous trails in their wake. Forget what you might have read; this isn't simply Forza meets Mario Kart, it's Project Gotham gone Nu Rave.
"It feels like there's been no innovation or push in the racing space - compared to other genres, things just haven't moved on", says Gareth Wilson, Blur's lead designer, as he prefaces our first look at Bizarre Creations' bold new direction. "There are a lot of big hitters, but they're all centred round the hardcore," agrees studio head Martyn Chudley, "What's changed? Rewind twenty years and racing games were the genre. You had games like OutRun, Super Hang-on and Micro Machines - these games were huge, but now the whole genre feels like it's become niche and specialist."
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It's a charge that Bizarre is even willing to direct at its own games. Metropolis Street Racer and the Project Gotham games that succeeded it have become the epitome of hardcore racing, defining a take on the genre where the high-score board rules all. The series' success is indisputable but, by the fourth entry, it had found itself driving down a cul-de-sac occupied by only the most dedicated genre fans.
"We used to hate the gamer," says Chudley of Project Gotham's approach, "You could complete a level on Silver and the game would go, 'That's a bit shit, why don't you do it on Gold?' We never gave them enough reward." Bizarre's remedy to this? Blur - a game where accessibility is the watchword, and one that hopes to return the racing genre to the front line it once occupied by distilling the company's vast experience into a title that's the most fun, emotive and downright intense available in its field.
The DNA of Project Gotham still runs strong through Blur - understandably so, given the seven years Bizarre spent marshalling the series - with real-life locations hosting real-world cars in action that's several steps removed from real-world racing. But Blur takes the arcade excesses of its predecessors and runs with them, resulting in an experience more akin to the heady excitement of Mario Kart than the cold precision demanded by Forza and its ilk.
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Yes, there are weapons, but their implementation has been delicately handled. "It's not like Mario Kart or WipEout, where the power-ups decide the course of the race," assures community leader Ben Ward, "That's not what we're about; we're more about augmenting your racing talents with the power-ups so there's more strategy to the race."
Blending seamlessly with the racing, weapons are accompanied by audio cues that become instantly recognisable - whether it's the digital ticking of a mine or the sub-bass hum that warns of an imminent shockwave, they're part of an audio package that's just as impressive as the game's visuals. True to the team's aims, weapons don't feel overpowering, with an always-available rechargeable shield that encases the car in an electric haze for a well-weighted defensive counterbalance to the game's offensive options.
The weapon set builds upon tools familiar to players of combat-based arcade racers. Two slots are initially available (with more spaces unlocked as the game progresses), with power-ups being collected on track. There are the customary options; Nitrous provides a fleeting speed boost, Shunt produces a burst of EMP powerful enough to push a car off course, while Barge sends out a lateral blast that sends surrounding opponents flying.
Cynical minds might scoff at Blur as nothing more than Project Gotham with guns, but there's a much more intelligent agenda bubbling under the surface. "If you look at other games in other genres, they're easy to get into but they have depth and different styles of gameplay," says Gareth Wilson, "Racing games have that, but it's very narrow – in fact most racing games don't have that accessibility to begin with, and you have to learn very quickly to drive, and once you've learned how to do it there's a narrow level of mastery."
![[IMG]](http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/984/984387/blur-20090519075156245-000.jpg)
One analogy that crops up is how playing most racing games is akin to playing a first-person shooter with just one gun – and Bizarre wants to create a game that gives you a full arsenal. "We wanted to expand the strategy," explains Wilson, "In Halo you've got to learn how to use a grenade, you've got to learn how to use the different weapons and learn the different characters, how Brutes are different to Grunts who are different to Elites."
In the same way Bizarre bought the high-score mentality to racing games with the Project Gotham series and introduced a racing game mentality to third-person shooters with The Club, the developer is now bringing the philosophy of the shooter to the racetrack. The perks work together in a harmonious lattice, providing players with strategic options that can be altered on a second-by-second basis.
But with accessibility being the game's mantra, aren't all of these options only increasing the complexity of the experience? "They are, but it's all about introducing stuff all the time," says Wilson, "At the start of the game, it's just nitrous pick-ups and you're in a simple car that doesn't drift. It's all about easing people into it, and layering stuff later on."
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While the weapon set might suggest that Blur is taking leave of reality, one of Bizarre's most impressive feats with this game is how it's naturalised the action. The races of Blur are performed by flash-mobbers, groups who arrive en masse to the game's locales and set up their own impromptu races. Gone are the crash barriers that lined the circuits of Project Gotham, with street furniture now fully exposed – and fully exploitable should the player wish to ram their opponent into a nearby lamppost.
Tracks are now marked out by hastily placed bollards – throughout the course of a race it's possible to see the traffic gathering behind the impromptu road blocks – and corners are marked by light projections, with chevrons lighting up building facades. The murky legality of the racing necessitates a nocturnal setting as well, with races taking place at either dawn, dusk or night - all of which serves to highlight the neon aesthetic that defines the game's visual style. It's a style that's present in the red trails that streak from car's tail-lights, the power-ups that float above the track and most explicitly in the weapons that fill the screen with electric splashes of primary colours.
This new, urban aesthetic informs every aspect of the game. The metropolitan centres that hosted Project Gotham's races having been replaced by their more downbeat fringes; London is represented but, in place of chic glamour of Mayfair and Piccadilly, the action has been shifted to Hackney, with the course taking players across the triangle of Shoreditch High Street, Great Eastern Street and Old Street. The slavish geographical recreations of Project Gotham are also no more, with the track designers now taking liberties with the layout in order to serve the gameplay; in the case of the Hackney circuit, the Gherkin has been engorged to provide a recognisable sight on the skyline, while Old Street has been flipped around in order to make the track flow more smoothly.
A run through LA's storm drains and the desert expanse of Amboy form the other two tracks available in today's demo, both highlighting Blur's new approach to track design. The City of Angels' drains provide solid resistance to any opponents sent wayward by an EMP blast, while Amboy offers vast run-off areas littered with precariously placed obstacles – again proving an effective tool to dispose of the other racers. Both tracks also underline another of Blur's key features – 20 car races, ensuring that driving is never lonely as the pack furiously jostles for first position.
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The vehicles themselves are again drawn from real-life, though they're now pulled from a more diverse pool. A multitude of car cultures are being supported, from typically game-friendly classes such as tuned cars, race cars and drift cars to some more idiosyncratic inclusions. Rat cars - scruffy looking vehicles designed for performance over aesthetics - feature, as do smooth cars which reduce the vehicle's form to its purest elements. Manufacturers have given full approval to some of the variations on their models created by Bizarre Creations, and that's not the only liberty the developer has been able to take; damage, only a half-hearted aspect of the Project Gotham series, is here a full-blooded feature, with bonnets flapping in the wind and cars shedding bodywork as they get involved in the hustle of the pack.
Even in its early state, it's a game that already looks to have balanced that much strived for ground of being easy to pick up but hard to master. The handling of the Dodge Challenger we spent most our time in was uniquely light and responsive and, while some of the complexities of Project Gotham's tail-happy system have been lost, a new level of accessibility has been gained. More outlandish car models will be available, with the Transit Supervan - Ford's late eighties' eccentric that placed an F1 engine in the famed workman's vehicle - spotted being put through its paces on a virtual test bed.
For all the change that's taken place on the track, one of the most surprising manifestations of Bizarre's new direction is in Blur's user interface, which borrows heavily from social networking sites. Tentative titles for it have included RaceBook, MyRace and our personal favourite InnerTube - but there's no doubting the influence of one site in particular, with the menus laid out in a way that will be familiar to anyone who's ever used Facebook. In the single-player game, objectives are laid out in the form of messages from other competitors.
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While the UI is merely a cute nod to social networking in single-player, for multiplayer modes it has much more exciting ramifications. Custom groups can be set up, enabling players to define the parameters of online races for up to twenty people. For the hardcore, it's possible to establish groups wherein weapons aren't allowed, and that's the tip of the customisation iceberg as whole rule-sets can be defined by the player and then filtered out to the world at large. Partly a response to the behaviour of the rabid Project Gotham community who made Cat and Mouse the mode of choice in previous games, it's also a novel way of bringing user-generated content to a console racer in a friendly way.
If all this talk of user-generated groups and social network systems is making your head spin, fret not, as traditionalists can indulge in a generous selection of offline multiplayer modes. Four player split-screen is being offered - a commendable inclusion and a reminder of racing games past. Indeed, it's this willingness to appreciate the rich history of the racing genre as well as a desire to restore it to its former glory that looks set to be Blur's biggest success. Throughout our time with Bizarre, the names of classic racers such as F-Zero, Lotus Turbo Challenge and Road Rash are constantly invoked; whether Blur's got what it takes to join such esteemed company come its release this autumn remains to be seen but, from first evidence, it seems Bizarre is hitting all the right notes.
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