GamesRelay

Name: Blur

Liverpool based Bizarre Creations and racing games go together like cheese and crackers; no self respecting racing game fan that owns, or has owned, an Xbox 360 is without a highly prized version of at least one of the acclaimed Project Gotham Racing titles. The trouble is that its been a long three years since they last had an excuse to stretch their racing legs, or wheels as the case maybe; fans have been eagerly anticipating what they could expect to see from the Liver birds next, and now, finally, they have answered.

Blur is the first full fleshed title for publishers Activision who purchased Bizarre Creations in 2007 and effectively ended the Project Gotham Racing series of games (it was a Xbox exclusive). Once again straddling the fine line of real world cars and arcade type racing, Blur sees fully licensed cars navigate fantasy based tracks and use an array of weapons against each other on racing tracks from around the globe.

The single player mode of the game is a career based affair, you start off as a newcomer to the racing scene and find yourself presented with a number of challenges before you can move up the ranks; your progression is marked by the number of fans you accumulate during your races, the more fans you get, the more you unlock, it's like an experience system, but in a racing game. You gain fans by winning races and by performing other set tasks, for example, each race has a Fan Run which when activated displays a series of gates that you must pass through to gain a bonus.

Alongside the normal races you might expect there are other modes to work your way though, sometimes you'll find yourself tasked with wrecking as many other cars as possible in order to gain fans, or racing against a series of checkpoints in which you must make it to the next before the time expires for example. After a number of conditions have been met within the races based upon your performance you'll be invited into a one-on-one race which you must beat in order to progress to the next set of challenges. If you manage to beat your opponent then you'll not only be rewarded with their car but also with a special mod which you can add to any car you own, improving its power ups; the first one for instance gives you the ability to use four bolts instead of three to take out your rivals. There are nine of these sets of challenges to beat but you don't need to master each one to proceed, you can return at any time to any of the earlier ones to try and improve your score.

The menu interface in Blur is extremely well presented, it's simple, and it's intuitive to use, with a little digging around the options you'll find everything you could possibly ask for, there are even options for linking your game to the official Blur website so you can track your progress and you can input the details of your Facebook and Twitter accounts so you can instantly update your friends on your progress within the game. It's all pretty much a social experience within the game world, in addition to letting the world know how you're doing with the game you can also challenge your friends as well, all from within the single player campaign menu. Once you've completed an event you're shown how well your friends have done at the same one, if you've won you can send a message to your friend and taunt them into doing better before continuing on with your career.

It's great to see the amount of thought Bizarre have put into the game with this sort of detail, the only negative to come out of it is that if you're playing offline then you're constantly met with a barrage of messages telling you that something can't be done because of this and asking if you want to connect; the truth is, if you're playing without your console being hooked up to the internet then nine times out of ten you're going to have a good reason for doing so and could probably well do without the constant nagging to go online.

Each of the cars you'll find yourself driving is modeled on a real world example, however, that's not to say that Bizarre haven't taken a few liberties along the way; you might be riding in a Ford Transit van but it's been pimped out with a Formula 1 engine for that added gusto, surely something many of the White Van Men around could make use out of for instance. The car models are all reasonably well rendered and are instantly recognisable on and off the track, you can even see inside the other cars while you race as the driver switches gears which is always a good touch. As you gain more fans you unlock more cars and although Blur is primarily an arcade experience each of the cars brings with it a unique set of stats which affect the handling and you'll soon be picking and choosing your vehicle based upon the course you're about to tackle.