Split/Second's destructive gimmickry coupled with its flash presentation will only hold your interest for so long

User Rating: 7.5 | Split/Second PS3
In recent years the sub-genre of arcade racing games has been slowly approaching extinction. The countless Need for Speed titles pumped out by Black Box Studios at the behest of EA killed many arcade fans' enthusiasm for the genre as a whole. According the Black Rock Studios, the answer for this slump in demand is Split/Second, an arcade racing game which discards the traditional trappings of recent racers and focuses solely on providing simple brash entertainment.

Split/Second is based around the interesting premise that you are a racing driver working on a TV show. More importantly the TV Company has rigged the city in which you will be competing with explosives which can be triggered at any moment by both you and your opponents. Essentially Split/Second is intended to be a solution to both the laborious and clunky attempts at Car Combat racing games and the weighty and frivolous excesses of NFS's weak attempts at narratives, placing you with little more motivation than the instruction to come 3rd or higher in each event.

It's refreshingly simple after the fake attempts at context that recent Need for Speed titles have tried and failed to achieve but it's hard not to be disappointed by the lack confidence with which Black Rock have implemented this. Ratchet and Clank: Deadlocked managed some self-aware humour surrounding the cliché of a Running-Man style TV show (which is what Split/Second really is bar the lack of any threats of dire retribution for escape attempts). In fact you'll barely notice the fact that you're in a TV production apart from the trailers that bookend each "season" and the option to watch a replay during a particularly violent wreck which is shame as even a more flashy presentation of the situation would have gone a long way to sell you on the idea of this insane but admittedly appealing concept.

The game's presentation is immediately striking, trailers for each season are amusingly similar to the overdramatic sports trailers you see on ESPN, when you pause during a race the game camera revolves lovingly around your car and the menus and interface are all sharply contrasted and colourful. This isn't a AAA title but you'd be hard pressed to notice this apart from the Spartan main menu which loses much of the flair seen elsewhere in the game. The HUD during driving is especially pleasing, all the information you need is presented in a fluorescent blue semi-circle behind your bumper. It's both striking and effective in its minimalism and when you play another racer you'll definitely notice how much more cramped and cluttered the screen is.

However the stylistic touches of the menus and interface pale in comparison to the gameplay itself. When it comes to the core racing experience how much you appreciate Split/Second's one and only gimmick will determine how much you enjoy the game. By drifting, drafting and landing jumps you'll fill a power meter made up of three sections, instead of using this power for boosting you can use one full segment to trigger an explosion or "Power Play" when a small icon appears above an opponent's car. These events can range from simple blasts to wrecking balls to exploding buildings and all will help to destroy your opposition.

If you fill the meter fully into the red then you can choose to expend it all at once in a cataclysmic "Route Changer" which in certain situations will wreck bridges, crash trains and collapse whole skyscrapers such is their scope of wanton destruction. The scale of chaos in an ordinary race is truly incredible and has to be experienced with a surround sound system because even the smaller examples of triggered destruction will shake the room violently as chunks of debris hurl across the screen and opponents are torn apart in the violence of the moment. It's wonderfully brash and simple fun regardless of how many times you do it and you'll have to race each of the 11 tracks several times to see everything Black Rock Studios has designed to blow up.

Though it may seem simple there is actually a complex layer of strategy beneath this rudimentary premise. You'll rarely be able to maintain much of a lead so when you do you will have to balance drifting with speed in order to stay ahead of the pack but still have enough power to exact retribution upon those who dare to pass you. You'll also learn to balance using smaller Power Plays to take out single opponents and open shortcuts with using the power-thirsty Route Changers to take out up to 6 or more drivers at a time when you're positioned at the back. You also don't have things all your own way, the opponent AI will trigger Power Plays almost a frequently as you will albeit with less precision and the resulting jolt of fear and surprise as a flaming bus hurtles towards you is probably one of the most thrilling sensations you can have in a racing game.

The staggering levels of destruction on display are helped by the game's graphical presentation which is one of the more pleasing ones I have experienced since Codemasters last DiRT title. The colour palette is a sumptuous mixture of reds and oranges which are complemented by exceptional light saturation courtesy of Black Rock's in-house engine. It's certainly one of the more interesting and stylish looking arcade racers in a while and the lighting is so strong that you hardly notice the incredibly simple geometry Black Rock has put into the tracks in order for them to be destroyed. None of the effects are particularly outstanding apart from the levels of destruction and the fire effects are shoddy at best but other than that the game generally manages to be easy on the eyes despite occasional drops in overall quality.

The game's framerate can get spotty during the more immense Route Changers and larger Power Plays, it'll never drop below 30 or so but you'll definitely notice the slowdown during the more hectic moments. Though it's understandable given the fireworks on display Forza and DiRT were getting 60 frames 3 years ago and if there's one thing a modern racing game needs it's a smooth and stable framerate. It's not the best looking arcade game out there and the destruction can't rival the detailed carnage of the last Burnout game but compared to its closest competitors: Blur and PGR4, Split/Second is an infinitely more attractive looking game.

The art design doesn't really live up to the superb lighting engine and the fantastic destruction that the in-house engine provides. Most of the races are set in city tracks and sometimes whole seasons are based around a single track which would be okay if the tracks were more varied. You'll race mostly in urban locales, dock areas and some industrial sites and though they may be well designed with the game's broad destructive focus in mind they aren't nearly as detailed or complex as the environments of Burnout Paradise and they're nothing we haven't seen before. It doesn't help that there are only 11 tracks in all and some seasons are entirely based around a single locale. It's impossible not to tire from seeing the same scenery over and over again.

The music is also quite repetitive and predictable in both the menus and in-game. It's a dull mixture of techno tracks and bland orchestral scores that lack the verve of the game's otherwise impactful presentation. What this game could have done with would be some aggressive techno or thrash metal to really sell the absurdity of the premise but sadly this is published by Disney Interactive so we get the uninspiring audio cuts from the last PG Jerry Bruckheimer action flick. It's doesn't really fit the rest of the game and when you notice it you'll decide to turn on your own music loud enough to drown it but not so loud as to detract from the game's otherwise exceptional sound design.

The work Black Rock has put in to keep the Power Play mechanic fresh and interesting also isn't enough to stop it becoming stale and repetitive by the time you blast your way through the 12 seasons which will take you around 11-12 hours depending on your skill level. For all the spectacle and glee at tearing apart the fictional city you're still just driving around in equally fictional cars (Ferrari aren't big on you dropping buildings on their machines apparently) pressing X to make the game blow up stuff for you. The developers are talented enough to stop the fatigue setting in until the first 8 or so hours but you'll still become tired of the same trick used again and again regardless of its brilliance.

The core driving mechanics are also not particularly impressive but they're serviceable enough to be enjoyable. There's as definite sense of speed with each and every car you get your hands on but the handling is quite heavy and the steering verges on the unresponsive, the game tries to emulate the pinpoint control of Burnout Paradise's handling model but it never offers quite the same feeling of control and planted-ness as Criterion's landmark arcade title although it's still perfectly adequate for a game where you can jump up 4 places by pressing a button at the right moment. Drifting is slow and cumbersome which is a major drawback and you will need to drift whenever you can to build up enough energy to use your power plays and doing so will allow the AI to sail past as they don't seem to abide by the same rules of power play acquisition.

There are 3 types of car in the game all classified by their fictional brand and they all sound punchy and aggressive if roaring engines is your thing (which it should be), oddly the crashes of the cars themselves lack the impact of other racers like DiRT and Burnout, they just "happen" rather than rend the sound system like a roll in a Subaru Rally Car would in DiRT 2 and it removes some of the visceral edge from the proceedings.

For those of you who crave the customization of the old NFS games of the past 5 years look elsewhere, all you'll get is a choice of colour and there isn't the same number of nuanced and interesting vehicles that games like Burnout Paradise, Blur and Project Gotham 4 have to offer. Frustratingly only muscle cars, race cars and exotics are useful for races after the second season so you'll learn never to use the racing pickups and trucks if you can help it, they're even more unresponsive to instruction than the ordinary models and their greater resilience doesn't make much of a difference as the respawn when you are wrecked is almost instantaneous.

There aren't many race types either but at least they're quite enjoyable. There's your standard race and elimination races but Split/Second's manic gameplay keeps them fresh. More interestingly there are 3 more Michael Bay-ish race types which are wonderfully absurd. The tamest of these is a survival mode where you earn points by passing trucks which are hurling explosive barrels at you, more hilarious is the mode where an Apache helicopter fires missiles at you which you attempt to finish a course (yes it really does) and finally you get to turn the tide against the Apache by drifting and dodging missiles to earn power plays which will redirect the rockets back at your attacker, the more ridiculous races are definitely the highlight of the singleplayer and it's nice to experience this kind of blatant insanity in a genre mostly concerned with lap times and car physics.

The most annoying of the races is called Detonator which is a basic gauntlet run with every power play in the level going off to destroy you and ruin your time. It's a painful exercise in memorization once you get to the harder seasons and it thoroughly outstays its welcome in the early chapters thanks to its punishing difficulty.

On top of this Split/Second suffers from the classic bane of all arcade racers, namely rubber banding. AI drivers who you may have wrecked only 30 seconds before and should be languishing in 8th will pass you at a moment's notice and most of the time they'll stay in front regardless of your car's superior performance or your driving ability; it's a power play or nothing if you want back into pole position. There's no such thing as "pulling ahead" in Split/Second, you either win by a hair's breadth or not at all, you'll rarely finish more than a second ahead of your opponents and you certainly won't hold first position for more than 20 seconds before the rubber banding kicks in and a opponent with an inferior vehicle zips past you. At first it's a minor annoyance but as the difficulty ramps up towards the later seasons you'll scream and howl in disgust at the way the game will throw a driver past you no matter how many times you have hit said driver with an airplane fuselage.

The AI also has a habit of destroying itself with surprising regularity, especially when the AI is in a tight pack, occasionally it will even drive into your power play instigated obstacles which is funny the first time but does lend a certain level of irritation when the same car rockets past you moments later.

The most fun in Split/Second is to be had online where none of the rubber banding issues rankle and you are all on a level playing field, it's much more hectic and brutal with players crashing and jockeying for position. You'll cackle with malicious delight when you manage to land the perfect power play on you opponents in front of you and scream with rage when those behind you achieve the same feat. Unfortunately you need to unlock cars in the single-player to play them online which would be okay if Split/Second had originally had car class filters like every other racing game out there. Black Rock has introduced a very basic matchmaking filter for this but nobody ever races with lower level cars so you'll have to grind up to at least the 10th season before you can hope to have a chance at winning a race online.

Online play is much more tactical than the singleplayer experience as most players can dodge smaller power plays like roadside explosions and maintain control over their cars better than the AI so you'll have to judge when to use your precious power play energy (which is much harder to come by online oddly) based on your knowledge of the tracks. Only Race and Elimination are playable online which makes sense but is nevertheless disappointing, that is unless you spend extra cash on the new survival race mode DLC which hardly anybody bought. Even without said DLC you'll struggle to find a full match even though the game is just over a year old. Happily there's split-screen co-op which is widely regarded as a rare diamond in modern games due to the stress is puts on the engine.

Split/Second is a wildly inventive attempt to put the flair back into the stale arcade racing genre. Considering the fact that gamers haven't gotten their hands on a truly crazy arcade game since Burnout Paradise, Split/Second is a welcome return to a simpler era where games were defined by whatever weird gimmick or trick the developers could come up with. It's exciting, brash and simple fun at its best but it probably isn't worth full price due to its lack of varied content. You won't find a more exciting racing game out there but you also won't find one that gets as old as quickly as this one can.

The Rundown:

Pros

+ Wonderfully absurd premise which creates the most exciting action you'll ever find in a racing game
+ Stylish presentation will make it hard to believe this is a small budget game by current standards
+ Impactful sound design adds to the chaotic fun of the race
+ Massive destruction in every sense of the word, you won't fail to be impressed by the scale on display
+ Lovely colour saturation and lighting makes this one of the more visually striking racers on the market.
+ Split-screen co-op
+ Power Plays are great fun to experiment with.
+ Surprising levels of strategy integrated into normal races.
+ 11-12 hours to complete the singleplayer is pretty solid by today's standards
+ Several of the game types are enjoyably ridiculous and must be experienced by those sick of arcade racing staples.
+ The closest a game has ever got to Hollywood-style action setpieces

Cons

- Occasionally unstable framerate and a lack of detail in most of the tracks
- Fire effects and other particle related visuals are eyesores but they're not overly terrible or distracting.
- Black Rock didn't have the guts to go all the way with the TV show premise
- About a quarter of the cars available are totally useless for anything other than a casual race
- Bland and uninspiring music
- Not enough tracks to sustain your interest
- Core controls and racing mechanics aren't up to the level we expect from quality arcade racers.
- Power Plays will get repetitive towards the end of the single-player.
- You'll have to grind through singleplayer to get decent enough cars for multiplayer
- If you're looking for customization options then forget it. Unless you like picking between 8 colours you won't do anything other than race
- Only six race types
- Lack of impact to crashes in the otherwise excellent sound design
- Terrible Rubber banding and AI with an enormous disregard for its own safety means you'll be challenged and you'll overcome that challenge but without a sense of accomplishment. It mostly comes down to luck.
- The absolute epitome of the phrase "one-trick pony"

Split/Second is heavy on spectacle and light on substance, as such it's a great rental game for you and a few friends to muck around with and gawp at the destruction and insanity of ordinary races but it's not something that will ever hold its own against the Burnouts and PGR's of this world. It's an enjoyable diversion from the norm and definitely worth your time but not a game you should go out of your way and pay retail price to experience.