By John Walker on March 11th, 2010 at 11:31 am.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the slightly slipped Disney racer, Split/Second. But it’s reappeared at GDC ahead of what’s now a May release. It’s a trailer that asks that all-important question one should always raise at the car dealership: can it outrun a building?
Playing games where shit blows up is clearly the reason Sir Clive Sinclair invented the first Turing Machine in 1857. Any racing game that doesn’t have buildings/towers/aeroplanes falling on the track clearly isn’t trying. Which is why I herald Split/Second for getting this right. How will it perform as a racer? That is a question. Here’s the video:
That looks a bit good.
It’s not very Disney, though, is it? Or is the entire Disney franchise getting the dreaded ‘gritty reboot’? I have visions of a cover based co-op shooter starring Mickey and Donald…
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Pirates Of The Carribbean is Disney too and, as Disney owns Miramax, so is Resevoir Dogs, technically. And The Black Cauldron was hardcore, yo.
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TRON had quite a dark tone.
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Really? TRON?
All I remember was Bridges having this almighty cheesy grin throughout the whole thing.
Maybe I saw the happy go lucky edition
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TRON does date from a time when Disney were deliberately trying to get more ‘mature’ – making things like Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dragonslayer, TRON and Black Hole. Not ‘mature’ in our modern sense of the word, but slightly more sophisticated and serious in tone. Results were mixed, but I wouldn’t feel too bad about recommending any of those films.
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Uh, Split/Second? I thought PURE was amazingly professional and amazingly dull. I’m on the side of BLUR in what promises to be an incredibly damp squib of a war.
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How can anyone forget the MCP from TRON, or even Sark? Or being forced to finish the game?
Dragonslayer is fantastic (what 80s fantasy films aren’t?), and still holds up well today (IMHO).
As for Spit/Second, I lost interest in racing games after the first The Need For Speed game. :S
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Krull, Sword & The Sorceror, Hawk The Slayer, Red Sonja and Conan The Destroyer all weren’t fantastic. Anyone saying anything bad about Beastmaster gets thumped though.
Racing Games!: the genre is far wider and richer than the Need For Speed games – try some other ones!
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“Pirates Of The Carribbean is Disney too and, as Disney owns Miramax, so is Resevoir Dogs, technically. And The Black Cauldron was hardcore, yo.”
Also, From Dusk Till Dawn.
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I can’t believe you didn’t mention LadyHawke there.
Come on people!
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…or a dark Warren-Spector-designed platform/RPG featuring Mickey as a morally ambivalent antihero and Donald as a creepy cyborg?
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Is it wrong I thought that sounded kinda cool?
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It’s a shame that could never happen.
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The irony unfortunately breaks when PC Gamers refuse to accept that Wii software are real games.
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The Wii might actually GET some “real games” if consumers would stop buying every craptastic minigame compilation that comes out for the dang thing.
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yeah
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Gotta say, this is looking great! Love the HUD-less HUD apart from anything else
I miss the Black Rock guys : (
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I have a lot of faith in this game vs. Blur, as the Black Rock guys also did the wildly overlooked Pure. Hopefully they will market it properly this time though!
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I must be dumb: what’s the obvious joke?
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@John: which is why it is happening.
Because the description Phlebas gives is for Epic Mickey, designed by Warren Spector, which is just what he says. And indeed it is a Disney game.
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I was making a little joke.
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Not heard of this until now, but it looks very interesting… Any idea if there’s a demo in the works? I’d love to give it a try, don’t tend to buy racing games unless the demo grabs me by the balls (like Dirt2)
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Faintly curious to see what this is like, but more glad to see that John’s alive. Yay John!
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Has Epic Mickey been confirmed as the official title? If so, awesome.
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It’s like Burnout nicking all the set pieces from a drivey movie blockbuster
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Legend, The Dark Crystal, Willow, The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, Time Bandits, The Barbarians (a hilarious film on the fantasy genre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6BAd7xJuU0), … ahh pure fantasy nostalgia!
There’s at least 500 reasons why Krull is better than… ;)
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The only problem with this game is I think it’ll be the game that finally proves to us how good we are at seeing through special effects and seeing the game behind it. Few times round the track and I think we’ll stop noticing that it’s massive explosions and it may as well be a blue shell taking out the leader.
It’s still looking good but there is something I find quite worrying. Every set piece in that trailer is from the same level and it’s the same level that they had as a playable demo at E2 back in October. I guess they just don’t want to show any more cards just yet but I am getting slightly worried that this game might turn out kind of small.
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That demo is showing the docks track – the E3 demo showed only airport.
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Yeah but I was referring to E2 or as everyone else calls it the Eurogamer Expo.
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umm “Sir Clive Sinclair invented the first Turing Machine” i really hope your joking with this
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I really hope you aren’t serious in not being completely clear that he was joking.
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Finding an infinitely long tape was the trickiest bit.
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Blur11 is right, guys. I think John made a mistake.
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And now I’m no longer sure who doesn’t get it and who’s pretending not to get it for comedic effect. Make the meta stop!
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Burnout Paradise But With Explosions? I am so there.
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For those commenting on Disney doing non-kiddy stuff…keep in mind they created the Touchstone imprint for just that very purpose.
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