The Mario Kart and WipEout series of racing games are both terrific fun, and one of the many reasons these games offer a consistently enjoyable experience is because of the way each game handles and balances the complex question of minute-to-minute and second-to-second player choice. Not only do both games feature (generally) enjoyable track design, but they also feature competitive racing, with an array of power-ups on the track to pick up and use to gain an advantage during a race.

While in the heat of battle, dozens of decisions are constantly flowing through a player’s mind depending on their position on the track, their position in the race, and their currently held power-up. Through these decisions, a continually changing racing strategy is unfolding in that player’s brain, in order to best figure out how to win that race.

What Mario Kart and WipEout do so well is provide just enough interesting and important decisions along a player’s path to ensure they never become too overwhelmed with choices on one end of the spectrum, or too bored with a lack of them on the other.

So when developer Bizarre Creations creates a game that takes the action racing approach of Mario Kart and WipEout, complete with a range of powerful and explosive power-ups, mixes in the studio’s keen ability for creating realistic vehicles and tracks, includes a few new features and hooks of its own, and calls that game ‘Blur,’ what can go wrong?

Not much, evidently.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Blur.