By Jim Rossignol on December 2nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm.
Via VG247 I spy a new trailer for Blackrock’s action-tastic racer Split/Second, in which you can blow up the world (or thereabouts) to win your race. “The city is your weapon,” they say, which sound about right to me. And look at those explosions! Hot damn. This looks like a special grade of fun that the fun-dealers usually keep for themselves. The bastards.
All very well and good, but an arcade racer lives or dies on the feel of the cars and the opposition you face.
The addition of all the fancy gimmickry makes for more variety, but equally means that the AI needs to be that much better.A I in driving is almost invariably terrible though and combined with an excess of rubberbanding can totally ruin things. I want to like this, but I just can’t get excited about it until I actually play it.
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I do worry a little bit that the “Press X to blow stuff up!” mechanic will get a little tiresome. That said, it’s the game Phill and I kept going back to at the EGExpo. Provided a hell of a lot of entertainment in our poor, tortured, hungover state.
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That is exactly the kind of experience I’m looking for in this game.
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Wow, this game looks great. It’s like Burnout except you can do so much more.
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I demand a game called ‘Council Cleanup: Operation Tidy’, released as DLC; where you trail the race in a transit van tidying all that mess, with quick time event tut-tutting for really serious messes.
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@Lewis
my friend and I played it so much at EGExpo we broke the XNA Dev Kit ^^
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So the other cars can blow up stuff in your face as well, or only YOU, THE PLAYER can do it?
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@Schmung This is Black Rock Studios developing this, and if you’ve played their previous racing game Pure, they’re quite good at getting the AI right. Hard enough to provide a challenge, but not so much as to be impossible to beat. The feel and handling of the driving mechanic was also rather good, so I have good expectations for this game.
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Like JackOfAllTrades88 said, sounds like Burnout but, I want to add, a more fun power-mechanic. Which sounds great. When’s it due?
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Am I the only one thinking that looks like Mario Kart for boys?
If they manage to get the balancing right (and not too frustrating/boring) and will have enough features (what about weapons?) that might turn out pretty good.
By the way: Does anybody know of a recent Carmaggedon-style game?
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Wait, Mario Kart isn’t Mario Kart for boys?
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What does split per second refer to? What’s a split? And how many can you do per second?
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I heard it was supposed to be a time trial gymnastics game, but then someone decided racing games were the more popular bet.
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i played a lot of the 360 version of this at the EG Expo and absolutely loved it, it’s the awesome lovechild of Wipeout and Burnout with extra ‘Really Big Explosions’
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I’m looking forward to this one, assuming that you can use bumper cam or whatever they call it. I was very disappointed to discover that Saints Row 2 completely lacked a 1st person camera, although it only cost £3 I guess.
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This looks like enormous fun actually, and exactly the kind of antidote to the seriousness of most racing games. If they can get the handling right, not too simmy, not too arcady, this would be a must purchase.
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