Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The main reason why I've made this review is purely because of the review right below me, which complains about requiring a "separate video card" to play. But I'll get to that in a moment.
This is basically a fast paced arcade racer with powerups. Take a game like Gran Turismo and mix it in with some Mario Kart powerups, and you have this awesome, awesome game. The goal of the game is to drive around in your vehicle of choice, all of them real life cars, and basically blast each other to smithereens with powerups that are strewn throughout the track. Driving is VERY arcade style - you can accelerate, brake, and e-brake and you steer left and right. Handling is fairly straightforward. Cars handle very much like they do in Ridge Racer. Instead of getting busted up after just one hit from an attack, your car has a health meter, which goes down as you take hits from enemy attacks. If your health meter depletes, your car gets wrecked, and you're put out of commission for a short period. You can pick up powerups to repair your car back to full health so this doesn't happen, but that can get challenging when you have 19 other players trying to fight for first place. Yes you heard me, you can have up to 20 opponents racing simultaneously, both in single player and multiplayer mode!
That's the basic mechanics. Variety-wise, you have multiple modes you can choose from. You have Blur's equivalent of Last Man Standing, where your main goal is to just smash the daylights out of your opponents, racing, where you go around a track and try to get first place while fighting off attacks from your opponents, hardcore "simulation" racing, where powerups are disabled and your racing skills are put to the test, team modes, and much more.
Plus, the game has unlockables both in single player AND multiplayer mode which are earned through "bulbs" from placing as one of the top 3 in races and through fans you gain from blowing other cars up, completing in-course challenges, and doing fancy moves like drifts - these are basically more or less like points. You can actually play multiplayer LOCALLY (great LAN party game!), online, or even do a 4 player split screen with four controllers (freakin insane). As you gain fans and bulbs, you unlock more mods, more cars, and more courses and game modes to play. Since the unlockables are available for both single player and multiplayer modes, you'll have twice the amount of replayability, and you'll still have a very solid single player game even if you can't go multiplayer. The online play is dedicated, so you don't have to worry about the host getting any sort of ping advantage.
Oh, and this game has NO rubber band AI. If you get in front, however, expect to be attacked by the "blue shell" of this game, a powerup that drops 3 pits of lightning that will damage and slow down your car (but they can be dodged, unlike the blue shell). The AI is challenging because it is quite relentless in its aggression and will do whatever it takes to stop you from gaining first. They will smash into you, launch powerups, and gang up on you if it means they'll get past you. They'll dodge your attacks, purposely block you from picking up powerups, and generally do what a regular player will do to win. And if the action is too hard for you, you can dial down the difficulty to something a bit more manageable too.
Soundtrack is excellent, a bit of techno and rock mixed in. Nothing out of this world spectacular, but nothing that particularly bad. You'll be too busy spending most of your time smashing up other cars to really care.
Unfortunately, this game does not support a third party controller. It does support XBox 360 controllers. You can use 3rd party software out there to have your regular controller emulate a XBox 360 controller, however, and IMO this game definitely needs a gamepad for you to get the fullest out of it. The other problem here, however, is that the game doesn't allow you to customize the controls, only pick from a small set of preconfigured layouts, which is very un-PC-like. You can play this game on keyboard, and it's still very playable on it, so don't let the lack of direct third party controller support stop you!
Graphics are top notch. Everything looks well done, incredibly detailed, and very colorful. The cars look a little bit too shiny, and that fits in well with the overall theme of the game, which has more of a hyper-realistic/fantasy feel to it than it actually looking like real life. This makes sense, as the game lets you use powerups that you'll NEVER see in real life and be able to bust up expensive cars that we'll never get to drive. The game is also rather light on the graphics card; I'm running at full framerate with a GTX 260 at 1680 x 1050. Unfortunately, you can't tweak the graphics settings that much like you can in other games - you just have a general setting to adjust the visual detail and the ability to switch off or on fullscreen and vsync and change the antialiasing. That con makes the game feel like a somewhat not 100%-done PC port, since the game doesn't try that hard to take advantage of what makes the PC a unique gaming platform: the ability to run games at graphics settings that surpass that of their console counterparts.
Lastly, I'd like to address the poster below me who bought this game. This is a CURRENT GENERATION PC game that is meant for GAMERS. If you've never bought a PC game before, you will learn your first responsibility is to look up the system requirements, which are easily available online. If you want to play any half-decent PC game, you WILL need a separate graphics card (and not even a ridiculously expensive one!), which will allow you to play the game with graphics that will surpass those of the consoles. There are PC games out there that can work with integrated graphics cards, yes, but those are actually the *EXCEPTION* instead of the rule. Please, PLEASE do not rate this game one star for something you failed to look up yourself. For anyone else, buy this game! Although it lacks the configurability of most PC-native games, it's still fun, and is cheaper than its console versions. With the price drop on Amazon, it's actually cheaper to buy it here than Steam too!
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Blur is the ultimate powered-up racing experience, dropping you into electrified action with a mass of cars targeting the finish line and battling each other as they trade paint in both single player and multiplayer action. Travel the globe from LA and San Francisco to Spain, the UK and more to take on the best the streets have to offer. Utilize an arsenal of powerups like nitro speed boosts, shock attacks, defensive shields, and landmines to beat your rivals across the finish line. You choose how and when to use your arsenal of powerups for ultimate impact in a race where the outcome is never certain.
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