Blur - First Look Preview

If there's one thing we're fairly certain about with Blur, it's that hardcore Project Gotham Racing fans are not going to receive it well. Players loved PGR because it bridged the gap between arcade racer and driving sim so well - it was two parts Gran Turismo and one part Need For Speed. Blur, on the other hand, has dispensed with any attempt at simulation and is, instead, a fully-fledged arcade racer. But any reasonable gamer cannot expect Bizarre Creations to stick within the confines of one gaming genre.

Last year's Club clearly illustrated that the studio is capable of handling multiple gaming genres and it would be a waste to bury the developers' talents in PGR games until the end of time. Nonetheless, after our first look at Blur, we're struggling to find any original or exciting features that will set the title apart from the crowd and it's not for want of trying - there's nothing we'd like more than to be able to come back and sign-off on Blur as a racing triumph.

Transfer Of Power

Our first main concern is the game's use of power-ups. These will take the form of weapons and upgrades that can be used both defensively and offensively against competitors. There are the usual mines, homing missiles, and guns amongst the list of offensive power-ups (it's beginning to sound worryingly like Full Auto), although perhaps the best looking weapons are barge and shunt. These are responsible for the bolts of electricity seen in Blur's screens and are used to knock competitors off the racing line (and preferably into a wall punctuated by rusty spikes).

Critically though, Bizarre assures us that gamers will need to apply their use of these power-ups skilfully in order to succeed. It's not just a case of pressing a button, letting the power-up fly, and sitting back to watch the carnage. This, Bizarre told us in our Q&A session, is what separates Blur from the likes of Mario Kart (of course, we'd suggest that power-up usage in Mario Kart requires skill as well, but whatever). When using barge and shunt power-ups, for example, gamers will have to figure out which part of the target car they want to hit in order to send it off balance most effectively.

Similarly, the defensive power-ups require an element of strategy in order for them to be effectively deployed. The key to this is a warning system that flashes up on the HUD whenever an opponent is powering-up their weaponry, at which point you should probably deploy that shield you've been saving. Another layer of strategy is added by the inclusion of power-up slots, which will allow players to stockpile and queue up weaponry for use at precisely the right time. Does this power-up system sound adequate for an arcade racer? Probably. Do we expect more from the studio that bought us PGR? Absolutely.

Therein lies the problem unfortunately: we've come to expect more than mere adequacy from Bizarre Creations. It's a studio that should be pushing the boundaries of racing games - like Black Rock Studio is promising to with Split/Second - rather than simply reinforcing the well-trodden path of arcade racers over the last decade. Other features of Blur that Bizarre is touting are alternate routes through the game's various circuits and dynamic objects that can be strewn across the tracks... It's all well and good but it's also the sort of feature that was groundbreaking in 2005 with titles such as Criterion's Burnout Revenge and is now more of a quid pro quo rather than a revolutionary asset.

At this stage, the tracks appear to be similar in style to the street circuits from PGR (i.e. fictional circuits built around real world locations). LA, San Francisco, and Barcelona have been confirmed for the game so far, while our first look took place on a circuit situated in London's Hackney. Fittingly for a borough of London that actually has a stretch of road referred to as 'Murder Mile', the visual style for Bizarre's track is gritty and hostile, toned down with a night-time setting and a darker palette of colours for the surrounding city buildings and industrial areas.

We've been assured that up to 20 cars will be able to line-up for races on these circuits, both on and offline (including a 4 player split-screen option), while the list of cars will retain the same licensed vehicles across the board that we've become used to from the PGR era. We managed to spot everything from contemporary sports cars such as the Nissan 350Z, to classic muscle cars like the Dodge Challenger, and menacing 4x4s like the Bowler Nemesis during our first look. There's even a Ford Transit van fitted with an F1 engine, which will be... interesting.

So at least Bizarre has retained its form on the vehicle front, which was one of the most appealing elements of PGR after all. What's more is that there will even be a full damage system for Blur, with Bizarre apparently being able to twist the arms of the notoriously fussy car manufacturers for its latest opus by convincing the likes of Ford and BMW to allow their metallic masterpieces to be fender bent (virtually at least). Grip, Strength, Stability, and Drift stats will then set apart each car model's performance on the race track and, presumably, how liable it is to break-up under the duress of repeated barge attacks.

As far as the multiplayer constituent is concerned, we understand that players will be able to customise race rules and essentially build a race event from the ground up in Blur. Bizarre is billing this feature as the spiritual successor to PGR's Cat & Mouse Mode and, to be honest, weren't not quite sure what the studio means by that at the moment. It certainly sounds like some sort of race editor that's more powerful than most, although we'll need to see it first hand before we start casting opinions on it.

Racebook

While we are struggling to see the good in Blur, that's not to say that there isn't promise under the game's bonnet. Bizarre Creations wants to tell a story with this game, which is a challenge rarely undertaken by driving games or at least, if it is, then it's nothing more than a vague stab at a plot. Bizarre wasn't revealing a whole lot about how this story will be integrated into the game during our first look, although early indications are that it will be more substantial than the genre is used to.

The Liverpool based studio does appear to be rallying troops by employing the skills of scriptwriters and the same cut-scene animators that worked on Gears of War. It's little more than intel at this stage - evidence of a concerted war effort that's very much in its infancy, although we're certainly intrigued by one of the devices Bizarre is using to relay its storyline. Using a social network of AI drivers within the game, Blur's main campaign will introduce players to a range of characters from an in-game hub that's similar to Facebook or Twitter.

Each in-game character has its own profile page/picture that you can become linked to. These characters can then send you messages inviting you to new race events or warning you of race rivals that you might be going up against. It's not as if racing games haven't approached characters in this way previously: Rockstar's Midnight Club series has dabbled with plot in a very similar way, getting you in touch with other drivers as characters rather than merely cars. That said, we can think of better ways to get in contact with an AI character than T-Mobile's Sidekick, as was the blatantly product placed case in Midnight Club: LA.

This is why Blur's social networking concept has so much potential. Rockstar has always alluded to the presence of a street racing community in the Midnight Club games but never let you directly interact with this community. Considering the kind of dialogue and character depth that could be illustrated through Blur's social networking, there's actually the potential to bring players into that racing culture. Perhaps it might be possible to respond to messages with a number of scripted reply options (similarly to an RPG), or read up on a racer's driving style on their profile page.

That's just hopeful speculation at this stage, although there's no reason why it couldn't be in the final game. During our first look, Bizarre did talk about a boss character called Khan who's protected by bodyguard cars during races, which is more than we're used to in the average arcade racer. Even more promising is the fact that Bizarre is planning to use this social networking hub for the multiplayer part of the game as well as its single-player campaign. We all know that Bizarre's PGR games have had a particularly strong online community in the past and, provided the developers can bring this into Blur, then the social networking could provide something integral to the whole game experience.

It's not that we fear Blur will be a huge disappointment - it has all the underpinnings of a competent arcade racer; it's just that we want to see more from Bizarre. What made the PGR series great were its cars and the Kudos system. In Blur, the impressive vehicles will no doubt remain although Kudos won't and has seemingly been replaced by power-ups instead. At this stage, the replacement does not appear to be significant enough to fill the gap.