Video Games Suck - Split/Second Velocity

An arcade style vehicular combat game, in which you destroy your opponents by blowing buildings on them.
Sounds fun? It is.

Some might immediately think that this game is only suitable for like 13 year old boys, especially when seeing the disney logo in the beginning. This game was developed by Blackrock Studio, the developers who created PURE. (Never played it)

Story: No, don't worry there is not much going on here. The game is about a TV show that plays it's first season of 12 episodes. It plays in a city that was built for destruction. All the racers have detonators equipped on their cars and can trigger nearby objects. You have a narrator who announces the next episode after you have finished one. (Thank God the narrator shuts up during races.) The concept would be ok, but a whole city built for a TV show? Come on, who could have that budget?
By the way a racing TV show is never complete without the - kinda' gay but fun - Lance Boyle. (Anyone remember the Megarace series?)

Gameplay:
You have a powerplay bar displayed under your car which has 3 sections. (2 blue, 1 red, a kind of HUD if you like) You drift, draft, jump, evade destructions, to fill them up. You can use Level 1 Power Plays to trigger a bomb dropped on the track, or blow up specific objects nicely placed on the side of tracks and watch your opponents fuck up. Level 1 PPs allow you to trigger shortcuts for yourself, it's so damn fun to see your opponents crash when the shortcuts get closed again. When you manage to fill up all three sections you can use Level 2 power plays or Route Changers. This is when a huge fucking building is detonated and falls on the track opening a new section of it. These are the best parts of the game really. The most spectacular level 2 Power Play is when a fucking huge plane gets crashed right onto runway where you race. (How realistic is that?)

You have also some other game modes like Knockout challenge where the last one gets blown up time to time. A time trial challenge when the show's hosts blow up sht on you. (Detonator mode) When you have to keep taking over trucks that throw explosive barrels onto the track. (Survival mode) You need to evade rockets and score some points (Air strike mode) and destroy the helicopter by redirecting the rockets back to it as quick as you can (Air revenge mode).

Most of the above game modes are quite gay but add a little (very little) variety to the episodes

You guessed right, these power plays are all pre-scripted, and by the time you get to episode 6, you'll realize that you've been doing the same shit for hours. So this game should be "consumed" in smaller doses. Another annoying shit is, that you cannot really use the body of your car to smash opponents, even if you manage to do it you won't get scores for that.
Anyway the fictional cars are all handle differently and the game is quite easy to control, you don't even have a handbrake.
By the way i really like the title: Split/Second. It sounds very nice but it's a bit misleading. This game doesn't have that speed like Burnout Paradise for example.

Graphics:
All the explosions and sparks look great, the tracks look detailed, cars look great, lighting is nice, textures are high resolution and the menu design is very creative. (Flying glass shards in slow motion FTW)
Thanks to the shitty current gen. consoles, all the explosions and physics probably would cause a great difference in FPS on them, so for this shitty reason - get ready - the game is limited to 30 FPS even on the PC.

A racing game at 30 fps. Not kidding.

Also the car damage modelling is limited to the following: 1. Unharmed car 2. Scratched car 3. Totally fucked up car.

Sound/Music:
At last a game that doesn't use shitty licensed music. The music is very movie like orchestral-electronic stuff, that sounds great and sets the blood pumping.
All the cars have different sounds and the crashes and explosions sound very well.
This game has an awesome audio design overall and should be played LOUD.

Just imagine when all the music and noises go numb when an observation tower is falling down towards your direction and when it reaches the ground, it smashes with a huge noise, music restarts, race goes on. Awesomeness.

Summary:
So this game is another example of "more style and less substance" but at least it is creative and fresh with some new ideas. Multiplayer is mediocre but I enjoyed it anyway.

7,5/10