12 Mar 2010, Posted by Pete in Features,Previews,Xbox 360, 1 Comment.

Blur: Beta Impressions [360]

I have to confess, this one kind of snuck up on me a bit. Perhaps it has snuck up on you, too, in which case allow me to enlighten you a little.

Blur is an upcoming racer from Bizarre Creations, they of Geometry Wars and (more relevantly) Project Gotham Racing fame, published by Activision. It uses real-world locations and “photo-realistic” (their word, not mine) cars. Ho-hum, right? Wrong. Blur’s twist is that there are powerups scattered around the track just begging to be unleashed on your unsuspecting opponents, turning the whole experience into something akin to the resultant hypothetical and metaphorical offspring produced were WipeOut ever to knock up Project Gotham after a drunken night out. As it were.

Currently, there’s a closed beta running for those who have preordered the game, or those who have friends on Twitter with codes. It’s a hefty download from Xbox Live at 1.4GB, and be warned – if your download stalls halfway through (like mine did) you don’t appear at present to be able to re-download it without getting another code and setting up another account. Which is a bit of a pain, but ultimately irrelevant to the final product.

The beta is multiplayer only, which means you’ll need a Gold subscription to Live to play. Fortunately, for those of you out there with just Silver accounts, the beta code also provides you with 48 hours of Gold membership to Live, which is nice.

Once you’re set up and logged in, you’re put into the game’s menus. These are attractive to look at, with clean, crisp fonts and a pleasing cyan-and-purple colour scheme. There’s definitely a touch of Geometry Wars about the game’s aesthetic, particularly in the iconography used in the menus and the powerup boxes scattered around the track. This clarity of presentation makes the menus suitably slick to navigate through, and it won’t be long before you’re into a lobby ready to race.

The beta provides you with access to several modes from the full game. Skirmish (2-10 players) and Powered-Up (4-20) modes are available from the outset, with a “destruction derby”-style mode and a high-speed car series unlocking as you progress. Both of these are straight races including powerups, with the only difference being the player limit. And it certainly makes a difference to have twenty cars racing around at the same time – things get rather intense, rather quickly, particularly when you throw the powerups into the mix.

The interesting twist with Blur’s multiplayer is the wholesale lifting of ideas from Call of Duty. You have a rank, which increases as you gain “fans” (experience points by another name, let’s not kid around here) and in turn, an increase in rank allows you access to more “stuff”, be it cars or “mods”, which slightly tweak how your car and the powerups work. Like in Call of Duty, most actions you take during a race have the potential to gain you fans, be it hitting someone with a powerup, landing a big jump, drifting or simply staying undamaged for a whole lap. There are also “challenges” which task you with, say, hitting ten cars with a particular powerup. Then you get a bonus at the end of the race based on your finishing position. This system always worked well in Call of Duty as it allows even inexperienced beginners to feel like they are being constantly rewarded, even if their performance in the leaderboards isn’t so great – and indeed, it works well here, too. Even the most cack-handed racer can move up through the ranks with a bit of perseverance, though obviously more skilled players will advance more quickly.

So what about the racing, then? Well, it’s a very different beast from Bizarre Creations’ previous work on Project Gotham. Blur is unashamedly an arcade racer, with loose handling, high speeds and bone-crunching crashes. It’s speedy and smooth, running at a solid framerate throughout, even when there are lots of cars on screen. There are some nice visual noise effects when crashing or being hit by a weapon, and the UI wobbling around with your car’s movement as opposed to staying static helps give a more immersive feel to the information being displayed on-screen.

The powerups themselves are a lot of fun, but crucially none of them feel so overpowered that they’re unfair. You have simple ones such as a shield and a nitro boost. Then you have the unguided missiles which cause an opponent to skid out a little. Then there are the close-range attacks, such as Barge, which sends out an energy wave to shove other nearby cars out of the way. The immensely entertaining Shunt sends out a huge homing missile in front or behind you which causes the unlucky recipient to flip into the air – but unlike, say, Mario Kart’s irritating blue shell, can be avoided by skilful driving. The powerups add an interesting extra layer to the racing action and mean that, unlike more “serious” racers such as Forza and even Bizarre’s own Project Gotham, once someone gets into the lead they’re by no means guaranteed victory as at any point they could find their arse on the receiving end of a good Shunt.

Blur’s certainly been a pleasant surprise – it’s unashamedly fun and silly, and Bizarre’s knack for producing addictive games with decent social elements is once again brought to the fore here. The implementation of the Call of Duty-style multiplayer system is inspired, and I imagine it’s something we’ll be seeing a lot more of in new multiplayer games. I’ll certainly be intrigued to see what the full game brings to the mix once it’s released.

For now, if you get the opportunity, the beta is worth your time, especially if you enjoy fun, arcadey racers. And no, I don’t have any beta codes at the moment!