As well as your bog standard racing you've got the other events to compete in, these include an eliminator event which sees you vying to stay at the front of the pack as the race at the back gets taken out every thirty seconds or so, then you've the detonator events which see you racing against a timed lap to try and equal or beat a set time, the catch here being that the track has traps that automatically detonate as you approach, leaving you never really sure as to what's going to happen next. Air Attack mode has you racing round the track and avoiding missiles shot at you by a helicopter that follows you, and finally there is a Survival mode to play. Survival sees a huge truck placed on the track which drops barrels as it makes its way round, in a similar style to the Death Race film. Blue barrels will slow you down and Red Barrels will wreck your car; the aim in this mode is to stay alive and get the highest score, it's yet another fun mode and something that breaks up the racing events very well.
It's not all rose coloured exhaust fumes though, the AI's use of power-ups can be a bit annoying at times, you've no warning what-so-ever when one is going to hit, so you can be quite happily motoring along keeping an eye on your racing line when all of a sudden you'll be blown up without warning, on some levels that's fair enough, but it can be a bit soul destroying when your ten seconds away from the finish of an event only to find yourself going from first to fourth and never really knowing what hit you. The same can be said for triggering a power up and then getting hit in the backlash, really you should only trigger them when you know it's safe; the game even advises you fairly often to use them when you're safe to do so, but there are times when you simply can't plan for this effectively and you'll wind up crashing into something quite random and then cause your own loss in the rankings while the other driver get's away without a scratch. It's also way to easy to crash your car sometimes; if you hit the sides of the track sometimes you seem to bounce off the barrier, other times you'll suffer a crash, there doesn't seem to be any consistency in the physics involved.
Although the cars themselves aren't real they do offer a great deal of variety and you'll have to choose which car you want carefully as you progress; just because a car is the fastest, it doesn't mean it'll get you round the track the quickest. Some are built for speed, some are built for strength, and some find themselves between everything else. You get access to better cars as you progress, they need to be unlocked by winning points from the races, so once you've unlocked one then you are free to take it on any course you might not have completed. Obviously as the game gets harder you'll not be finishing first each and every time you take a race, unless your the worlds best driver, but it isn't necessary to complete all of the courses in one episode to progress to the next one, however, it will certainly help to do as much as possible so you can get the right car for the job; if not the right car then one that will get you past the finishing line in a decent amount of time so you can at least add points towards your next car unlock, you'll find that every win, no matter how small, counts when you get to the back end of the races.
Of course there are multiplayer options both offline and online; taking the game online allows you to race against friends or people from across the globe and you can find all the modes from the single player online, plus it's just as smooth online as it is off. There isn't however a class system online which can make things slightly difficult for new players as you can end up playing with people who have faster cards and a lot more experience than yourself, this of course is easily remedied by playing through the single player races, but, it still would of been nice to be suited to players of a similar skill level, even a ranking system would of sufficed.
Split/Second is presented in an exceptional manner, Black Rock have simply excelled themselves here. Right from the start you're drawn into the idea that this is a television programme, you're even given previews of what's to come in future episodes, and what you can expect from the tracks up ahead in way of dangers. The whole package is brilliant, and aside from the niggles that are previously mentioned there are other small bits and pieces that can grate; for example if you prefer the in car view you've to reset this each and every time you race, it's not hard or difficult, just the press of a button, but it's just a small annoyance and not something that distracts from the overall experience you'll find when playing Split/Second.
If you're an avid arcade racing game fan then you can do no worse than Split/Second, it truly is an excellent effort from Black Rock, sure its has its faults but it's not hard to imagine those as an extra challenge for some, and a hurdle to overcome for others. Due to the timing of it's release it can't help but to compare it to the recently released Blur, but whereas Blur will take you back to Burnout, Split/Second will take you back to Ridge Racer. In Blur you'll be racing powered up cars while in Split/Second you're racing on powered up tracks, both deserve and warrant the attention however, but saying one is better than the other is difficult, each has its own positives and negatives. Black Rock have undoubtedly hit upon their own little niche in the racing market with this title however and it's certainly going to be interesting to see where they take there next title after this.
