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.

Bizarre Creations has let loose a new, pumping trailer for Blur, the studio’s next arcade racing game which features a mixture of elements from Project Gotham, Burnout and… Mario Kart.

With this in mind, and by watching the trailer below, this can only be a good thing:

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The launch of Activision Blizzard and Bizarre Creations’ upcoming arcade racing game, Blur, has been pushed into 2010, ostensibly to give the developers more time to focus on the game’s innovative elements and the online multiplayer modes.

Blur’s primary gameplay ‘innovation’ is its use of power-ups strewn across the race tracks in the game, combined with a fast paced arcade style of racing, similar to the Burnout franchise, and Bizarre’s own Project Gotham series. President and CEO of Activision Publishing, Mike Griffith said of the delay:

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“Activision Publishing is set to revolutionise the racing genre with the debut of Bizarre Creations’ newest project, Blur - the ultimate wheel-to-wheel racing action experience.” Well, that’s what they say, anyway…

Blur, a new racing game from Bizzare Creations and Activision, sounds like a hyped up version of classic racing series Burnout, as 20 cars on the same track compete to reach the finish line first, while using power-ups to gain advantages over the other competitors.

Players will also have access to offensive and defensive attacks while driving around real-world locations such as LA and San Francisco (USA), Barcelona (Spain) and Hackney (UK - ?!).

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