Blur (PS3) Review
Released: 5/25/2010
Played: 7/14/2021
I remember there was a fair amount of hype surrounding this game when it was first announced and there was certainly a fair amount of buzz in the press to be sure. "It's basically Burnout combined with Mario Kart" was the overall consensus of what this game was going to be. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm was shared with another game that was released just a week earlier, Split/Second. Both of these games had modern cars from a variety of manufacturers, rocking soundtracks, powerups, car combat, and enough edginess to cut into the most hardened gamers. Having a release dates in such close proximity to each other seemed to split the fan base between the two games and neither one was much of a breakout hit. At the time, both games were reviewed rather well by the critics as well as the public, but they never seemed to gain that huge market share their publishers were clamoring for. Both games did gain a cult following and command a decent price for a physical copy these days (which is uncommon for a racing game). As with many games, the nostalgia associated with them seems to embed itself in a vocal contingent of the public and it's difficult to find a negative word about this game in any reviews or retrospectives written in the last few years. Is the game really that good and deserving of its cult following? Or is it just rose colored glasses that allow old fans of the game to overlook its glaring flaws?
When I popped the game into the PS3 I was a little bummed to see the game trying to connect to the servers to gather data for leaderboards and whatnot. Obviously, the servers have been offline for who know how long. It's a depressing foreshadowing of the future of game collecting. With all of the connectivity required in games from the last 15 years, are we still going to be able to play them when the servers shut down? Luckily, that wasn't the case with this game and I was able to back out of the loading screen and start the game just fine. I was greeted with an intro that shows a lot of cool cars drifting, sliding, ramping, crashing, and all the other stuff you want to see cars to in a video game. It looked pretty cool and the graphics of the cutscene still held up pretty well. I started the career mode and saw that the game was split into several sections with an obvious "rival" that you're supposed to defeat at the end. I picked a car and jumped into the first race. As for the gameplay, this game is just a racing game. You start in last place, and try to make it into first by the time you cross the finish line. You drift, draft, overtake, rub, slam, and do whatever you can to move into 1st place and then your do everything you can to stay there. You pick up items like in Mario Kart. There are healing items, shields, fireballs, homing missiles, and several more to aid you (or stop you) on your goal of coming in 1st place. I like the idea of this, but honestly, the racing is so chaotic, draw distance so bad, and motion blur so strong that it can be really difficult to connect your shots with anything. The cars all have various stats like grip, speed, etc. and selecting the correct vehicle for that specific race is imperative to your success. I strongly emphasize the word, "imperative" in this case because this game is HARD. The A.I. is ruthless and overly aggressive. There are several types of cars to select from and they range from sports cars, trucks, eurocars, rally cars, etc. But, in my opinion, it didn't seem to matter very much as there are so many cheap programming tricks implemented in this game to make it more difficult and often unfair. Many times, I would be running side by side with a pick-up truck while I was in a top of the line sports car. Without any powerups, on a straight away, in clear weather, the truck would just pull away with a 30% speed boost out of nowhere. When I got out in front of the pack, I would constantly be bombarded with tons of heat-seeking fireballs (this game's version of the red turtle shell from Mario Kart). As soon as the 3rd race, I was having to do several attempts.
There are different types of events as well. There's standard races with car combat like mentioned above. Also, there's combat events where you have to shoot down computer controlled bots to gain points and add seconds onto a timer. You have a target score to reach in order to pass the race. There are also time trials where you have to collect little clocks and speed ups to finish the race with enough time on the clock. All of these events are ranked and award you medals that you use to unlock new cars and other events. While you're racing there are also supplementary events that occur that increase the number of medals you can earn. Some of these just involve following a specific path by going through 15 checkpoints scattered over the raceway. Another way you can earn a medal is by gaining a set number of, "fans" while racing. This is done by destroying opponents, drifting around turns, performing jumps of ramps, and other cool actions. Unfortunately, completing any of these tasks isn't very doable because of the annoying A.I. getting in your way. Many times I was trying to get through a checkpoint just to get rammed out of the way at the last second. I feel like the A.I. of the game is designed to make your time more frustrating rather than try to win the race. Also, the framerate, motion blur, and screen shaking make viewing this game quite difficult. A lot of the time I felt like I couldn't really see what was going on or where I was supposed to go. This only adds to the chaos of playing this game. As far as I can tell, there's no way to upgrade your cars. So, you're stuck using the same underperforming vehicles time and time again until you grind out the fans you need to unlock a new one.
After several attempts, I made it to the final boss of the first area only to discover that I wasn't allowed to race against them. Apparently, you're supposed to complete a bunch of arbitrary goals while doing the previous races. These included things like gaining 5000 fans, destroying a certain number of racers, knocking someone off the edge of the map, etc. Ugh.... so, progress is locked behind performance challenges. Disappointed. I ground out the challenges to unlock the boss and proceeded to get absolutely destroyed by her. I tried several times with no success before googling some reviews of this game. Quickly, I realized, that a lot of people were very frustrated with the single-player mode of this game when it came out. There are plenty of forum posts complaining about how hard and unfair the game is with counterpoints telling them to, "get gud." Arguing ensued.
This led me to look at some of the critic reviews, and I was surprised to see that a lot of them agreed with the public... and me about the single-player. Despite this, I continued to play for several more hours. I completed all of the races, time trials, and combat events that I encountered, but was completely locked out of the boss battles because of the terrible conditions you have to fulfill. It was around this time that I realized that I just wasn't having fun playing this game. Yes, it had cool cars, combat, powerups, attitude, decent graphics, good play control, and bumping (yet forgettable) music... but it just didn't do anything for me.
I had to ask myself, "why does this game have such a following?" The answer is simple. Multi-player. Like many games of the time, people just played online with their friends and had a good time being in the chaos and excitement. The reviews from the time more or less confirmed this. As is often the case with games that are remembered more for the online experience, I wonder if many of the internet warriors supporting this game today actually played the single-player experience when it first came out. Without the nostalgia of playing with your friends influencing your opinion of the game, I just can't see someone having a good time with this game in 2021. There is no multi-player for this game anymore, so it has to stand on its single-player mode only. Obviously, it can't do that.
There are a lot of missteps and poor design choices with this game that lead it to be both boring and frustrating simultaneously. Despite its cult status and surprisingly high monetary cost (around $30 at the time of this review), it's nothing special and isn't a very good racing game in my opinion. The combat seems to get in the way of a decent racing game rather than improve it and the progress being gated by frustrating challenges took out a lot of the sense of momentum. Unless you can travel into the past and play online, I would avoid this one. Your time is better spent elsewhere.
Final Status: Played
Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)
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