Written by: Ian

 

 

 

"Blur" attempts to ‘blur’ the lines between Mario Kart and PGR, with real cars, real locations, arcade handling, and power-ups. Does it work?

 

Bizarre have always had a reputation for making tight arcade games, but most of their non PGR games have been flops- so what category does Blur fall into?

 

 

There is a kind of story to Blur, which sees you take on various rivals, but there’s absolutely no focus to it whatsoever, whilst the ‘last time on Blur’ sections seem totally arbitrary and almost like they were added at the last moment. The various videos and tips from some mysterious female racer also do little to expand any sense of why you might be racing.

 

 

Blur describes itself as ‘powered-up racing’. If you’re not sure what this means, then take the real-life cars and circuits, but arcade handling of the PGR series, and then take the power-ups of Mario Kart.

 

 

The concept sounds pretty good, and in practice, the game works really well. Whilst the circuit design is obviously less imaginative and ridiculous than the colourful madness of Mario Kart, Blur tries to make up for it with a more frenetic pace. The top-tier cars are seriously fast, and rather than Mario Kart’s 8 players, you have up to 20 competitors battling for victory, which is pretty awesome.

 

There’s also more variety than MK’s straight racing, with several different modes over the straight race, including destruction (where you gain points by wrecking other cars), and checkpoint (similar to time trial). My one problem is that there is little imagination in the power-ups either, with most of them being ripped straight from Mario Kart- the red shell equivalent is even coloured red!

 

 

Blur is also an extremely short game. Presuming you play on easy (respect if you don’t), then getting through all of the tiers, even with the fact that you have to repeat loads of the races to unlock the final challenge, will probably only take 6-7 hours. The balance is also pretty poor- with some circuits only being used 2-3 times in the entire single player. Whilst you can see there is a multiplayer focus, there is no excuse for such a lack of focus on single player events- especially considering the past Bizarre have had with PGR games having such great single-player experiences.