Split Second Velocity

   Pity the poor construction workers of Velocity, home to the reality TV show that's at the centre of Disney and Black Rock's volatile racer Split/Second. Every day they go to work, building shimmering shopping centres, towering concrete masts and expansive warehouses, only to see them blown up, brought down or smashed into submission. It's a cruel loop for sure, but it does make for some uniquely exhilarating action.

Split/Second is that scarcest of things: a racing game with some genuinely fresh ideas. Explosives line the circuit, ready to be triggered by racers on-track in their attempts to wipe out the opposition. Their effects range from the relatively straightforward - getting a helicopter to drop a small bomb on to the track or sending an articulated lorry into the path of other cars – to the breathtakingly spectacular - bringing Jumbo Jets crashing from the skies or overturning an entire aircraft carrier. It's power-up racing with the power maxed out to Hollywood proportions. 

Indeed, Hollywood's loudest moments are the inspiration for much of Split/Second's action. Velocity itself is a compendium of set-pieces recognisable from the back catalogues of Bay and Bruckheimer, all storm drains, airports and dockyards told in hazy, bloom-filled vision, that late summer evening sun casting a gloriously warm light on the city's stretch of concrete and steel.

Split/Second's real brilliance lies in the fact that it's concrete and steel that's at the player's command. Power Plays send the environment tumbling with the push of a button, and they're available in multiple flavours. A three part meter that's neatly projected under the car is topped up Burnout-style by drifts, passes and by flying close to the chaos on track – one section can be traded for a basic power play or players can wait to unleash a more devastating move, or even send whole sections of the track cascading and altering the layout of the entire course.

Tactics are admittedly thin, but that's excused by the sheer thrill of it all. Races are consistently close fought thanks to some smart rubber-banding that ensures that the threat of a Power Play hangs over the entire field, something that's more keenly felt when out in front. Unfortunately there's no way to apply Power Plays to the chasing pack, ensuring that agility is the only defence when the scenery inevitably comes raining down. 

It's an aspect of Split/Second that's given full dues in Detonator, one of several game modes that complement the straight-up races. Here, in one fully-charged lap run solo, every Power Play is deployed, and it's simply a case of notching up the fastest time while struggling to survive the pyrotechnics. It's the game's appeal distilled into a 90 second blast; frenetic, dynamic and most importantly a whole load of fun.

Other modes show that the Hollywood influence runs deeper than the aesthetic, taking their cues from some iconic film moments. Survival riffs off of the big killer trucks that have been a Hollywood obsession since Spielberg's Duel: articulated lorries course through a series of bespoke tracks, and the player's task is to avoid the hazardous load that they freely spill. Blue barrels that fall from the trucks will slow the player, red ones will wipe them out and the objective is to stay alive as long as possible – and when the track is littered with deadly debris and there's other cars all to happy to shunt you into its path it's a fairly tall order. 

Air Revenge takes the idea of a malevolent machine as the enemy one step further; this time it's an attack chopper that's on the player's tail, swooping close and low as they race through the city. A torrent of missiles rains down – dodge them successfully and it'll fill a meter projected beneath the car that, once topped up, can volley them back at the helicopter. Rinse, repeat and it'll eventually be sent tumbling from the sky.

All this is housed within the reality TV framework, though in truth it only really makes itself known in trailers that bookend the game's 12 'episodes', each housing six events including a showpiece finale. Credits won unlock further events, while wrecking enough opponents earns bonus events. It's simplistic stuff, but the variety in events is just about sufficient to ensure that working through all twelve episodes doesn't descend into a slog.

With so much focus on the circuits themselves it'd be forgivable to assume that in Split/Second the car most definitely isn't the star, but the game's selection of vehicles certainly has a fair crack at stealing the show. Cars are split into three loose categories – Muscle, Truck or Sports – and though entirely fictional they're all utterly desirable.

They've a chunkiness about their look that translates into how they drive – indeed, Split/Second's cars look and feel like Tonka Toys, with a robustness that invites you to throw them about. Do so and a satisfyingly solid handling model comes to the fore. Drifts are initiated, as arcade racer tradition dictates, with a lift of the gas, and once the back end is out Split/Second asks for more delicacy than most in order to keep the car on the road.

As a racer, then, Split/Second brings more than its fair share of new ideas, but it's still got one eye on the genre's rich past. Multiplayer successfully recaptures the anarchic spirit of racers of old, with Elimination and Survival available alongside the vanilla racing. Eight players are supported online, although unfortunately with the servers under-populated before release we were unable to put it through its paces. Split-screen for two players, however, has proved itself to be a blast (pun intended, thank you very much).

The Verdict

Split/Second is an explosive shot of distilled arcade energy; it’s action that’s fuelled by the slick production of the Hollywood a-list, and racing that’s infused with an infectious amount of fun. Armed with nothing more than a handful of dynamite, developer Black Rock has shook up the racing genre in much the same way that Criterion did nearly nine years ago with the original Burnout.