Action, racing, fighting, shooting, role playing best games for those who looking to find something, not just to waste a time playing tiny flash games.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Blur
Generally I'm one of the best gamers I know. I don't say that to brag -- I say it to provide some context when I say that Blur, the new racer from developer Bizarre Creations (Project Gotham Racing), can be damn hard.
The single-player Career mode in Blur
features some brutal A.I. While I was desperately trying to master my
drifting skills and just maneuver the game's treacherous tracks, the
A.I. was busy launching attack after attack on me at the most
inopportune moments. You see, in the world of Blur, despite all its
real-world trappings, cars can't just race and see who drives the
fastest -- they have to launch weapons at one another as well.
This isn't that big of a problem in the smaller races of up to 10
cars, but in the larger races with 20 opponents, chaos will ensue,
making racing frustratingly difficult on the Normal skill level. It's
one thing to be a great driver who can pull off awesome turns amidst a
swarm of opponents, but it's quite another thing to do so while
explosions are going off every few seconds as well. Sometimes the A.I.'s
ability to take me from first to 20th place with a barrage of shots
just felt downright cheap.
Not that all the Career events were lessons in frustration. I
actually enjoyed the Destruction levels, where you have to shoot enemies
to gain time and points, and the Checkpoint stages where you're racing
against the clock. But I think it's telling that the best levels in the
game's Career mode were the ones where you generally were tasked with a
single goal like attacking or racing, rather than having to combine the
two together as the standard race mode makes you do.
I eventually swallowed my pride and switched it to Easy in the
latter portions of the Career mode, but found these races to be too
little a challenge. Granted, it made gathering "lights" -- the in-game
collectibles you get for placing in a race or for completing specific
objectives in an event -- much easier, but the thrill of beating
worthwhile opponents was largely lost. Still, If you are going to slog
through the single-player to unlock some items, Easy is a good way to
go, especially if you want to focus on gathering "fans" by doing tricks
and hurting opponents with weapons.
Fans actually play a huge role in Blur, and while they're really
just an arbitrary number rather than people you can see, they do give
you a nice set of goals to constantly strive for. Fans are gained by
driving well, doing specific objectives in a level, or by attacking
opponents. You can gain lights for getting a certain level of fans in a
given stage, but the primary purpose of fans is to unlock new tiers of
cars for your use.
While fans didn't make the racing fun in the face of being blasted
repeatedly by my opponents, the constant sense of reward I got from
seeing little numbers pop up as I hurt the other drivers, or worked
towards some overall goal for my rival, started to scratch that same
itch that competitive FPS games like Modern Warfare do. Perhaps with a
more balanced A.I., or more options to tune them for a greater variety
of skills as, say, other contemporary racing games are doing, Blur could
have been an addiction for me.
Not that facing off against humans is much better. Sure, there's
something to be said for how much fun it can be smashing your friends
with a well placed weapon, but the 20 player online matches quickly
devolve into a chaotic mess where getting first is a secondary concern
to just trying to survive in the flurry of firearms. Thankfully this is
largely not a problem in the game's fun team-based races and battle
modes or in the smaller, 10-player races, which are the best way to play
Blur online.
If you care about unlocking a bunch of items and doing an experience
grind, then Blur's online has you covered, with a host of items and
mods -- stat boosting items to help you in combat -- to unlock. To me, a
game like Blur is at is best when I'm playing with a few friends, which
is why the inclusion of four-player split-screen is fantastic.
Editor's Note: You can play with a controller on the PC version if desired.
The Verdict
Blur isn't the addictive, competitive online game that people wanted it to be. Rather, Blur
is a palate-cleansing game, the type of experience you pop in for a few
minutes with your friends when you're looking for a break between
sessions of a game you really like marathoning. If you love a more
hardcore racing experience, and the idea of truly chaotic combat sounds
appealing, than Blur might be for you. If you're looking for a fun,
pick-up-and-play combat racer, then I think you need to go back to Mario
Kart or, better yet, pick up the excellent Split/Second.
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