It only takes a split second for you to go from enjoyment to frustration in this over-the-top racing game.
That is the idea behind Split/Second, a high-octane, adrenaline-pumping reality TV show featuring fast cars and explosive hazards at every turn. The game's single-player season is split up into 12 episodes, each divided into five events with an unlockable bonus event you can unlock by meeting a quota of wrecked opponents. These events include standard races and eliminations, Survival, which has you dodging exploding barrels as they spill out of a semi truck, Air Attack that has you dodging incoming missiles and Air Revenge that has you deflecting them back, and Detonator which pits you against the clock, triggering every trap on the course.
Because you can take out your rivals, this categorizes Split/Second into the car combat sub-genre of the racing genre. No, your cars aren't equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers that arm when you pass over a lighted pad on the track. You're given the ability to remote detonate traps laid throughout the course by building up what's called a Power Play meter. In order to fill this meter, you have to drift around corners, draft by following in another car's wake, catch air from jumps, and narrowly avoid someone else's Power Play.
Your Power Play meter is composed of three bars. The first two are blue, and when you execute a level one Power Play, it'll consume just one segment. Basic Power Plays consist of blowing up gas stations, rows of taxis, construction equipment that sweeps across the tarmac, and overpasses that crumble to the ground. When you fill the last bar, which becomes orange, you'll be granted the ability to trigger a devastating Level 2 Power Play that wreaks more havoc over a larger area of the track, such as dump trucks being swung into bridges by helicopters, giant smokestacks collapsing, and even a dam bursting and gushing water everywhere. You can also use Power Plays to activate shortcuts momentarily and then crash your pursuers as they seal themselves back up.
As exciting as this mechanic is, it tends to grow old after a while. The game suffers from a small number of tracks, and since there are 72 events in total, you're going to be racing them multiple times. You'll learn where all the trigger points are, and how to easily dodge them, and then the wow factor begins to dilute itself. Also, the game features a ruthless rubber-band AI so there will always be a rabid pack of cars hot on your heels, and they'll detonate Power Play after Power Play to rob you of your position.
What complicates matters is the fact that the controls are either too tight or too lose. A lot of the cars don't handle well, and the drifting system has a very steep learning curve. The traction physics feel like they've been designed to make it much easier to lose control when a Power Play is triggered, which is fine because that's what Power Plays are meant to do, but it's during normal maneuvering that gets frustrating. Some cars are very prone to fishtailing, over and under-steering and most times, you won't even need to encounter a Power Play to lose first, because you'll be your own worst enemy and smash into a wall all by yourself.
For a racing game whose theme is a reality TV show, it doesn't do much with said theme. The only way you even know it's fashioned to be a television show is the announcer that speaks during episodes. There is no story structure to speak of, no drivers to get to know, no interviews at the end of the episodes; nothing.
It's also regrettable that the game doesn't do anything interesting with the cars at all. Black Rock Studio's previous game Pure let you customize just about every single part of the ATVs, even letting you name the vehicles, but in Split/Second, the only customization you're allowed is to pick different colors. One cool feature they did include is that the trophies you unlock become decals to decorate your car, but considering all that was offered in Pure, it's just a crying shame that you can't alter the aesthetics or performance of the cars you chose.
The strongest facet of Split/Second lies in its presentation. Technically, it's not one of the best looking racers on the market, but it makes up for it in sheer style. There is no HUD (heads up display). Rather, all the vital information such as lap number, position, and your Power Play meter are plastered on your rear bumper. The game makes liberal use of shaky cam to deliver a white-knuckle sense of speed, and the camera cocks itself at an angle during a hard drift to accentuate the action.
The game's filled to the brim with fiery explosions and a wide variety of debris, both concrete and metal alike. Again, technically, it just isn't that impressive compared to other games of this genre. Although there are lots of shiny textures and intricately built destructible environmental objects, the game underwhelms when these textures are viewed up close. Still, the artistic direction of special effects really helps to pick up the slack as the feeling of going ridiculously fast while dodging all sorts of carnage is about a thrilling as arcade racing can get.
You can't have a game that's all about stuff blowing up without it sounding exciting, and Split/Second is an orchestrated cacophony of chaos. There's just so much going on, from the engine noises and tire screeching, to buildings exploding and highways crumbling; it's all so loud and very, very noisy. The soundtrack also helps get the blood pumping, because it's the kind of music that's best suited for a Hollywood blockbuster movie.
Ultimately, that's the perfect way to describe Split/Second - a Hollywood blockbuster movie. It's the perfect popcorn experience, where you sit down and have your senses blown away by all the flashy explosions and sounds. Unfortunately, these types of experiences never really offers you much else, making Split/Second a rather shallow racing game. The reality TV gimmick is never capitalized on, and it desperately needed several more tracks, if at least more variations of each track. The insane difficulty will also prove to be a deterrent to any casual racing fan. Split/Second, just as with any popcorn flick, is best enjoyed as a rental.