On a cold July evening in Johannesburg a group of gamers who also sometimes write some stuff about games, as well as some journalists, got together to see what Activision-Blizzard has in store for South Africa this year. After a presentation of the solid line-up we got to play a pre-alpha build of Blur in a 6-player linked setup.

Blur can be described in a short sentence as an arcade racer with power-ups - a bit like Wipeout, but not futuristic, a bit like Mario Kart but not cartoony, a bit like Burnout but not as crashy.

The code we played was rigged to provide players with a random track and a random car for each race. One track is in a city and feels a lot like PGR while others are around high speed rings or country dirt-roads complete with barns to drive through or around. Cars are varied - sometimes I was lumped with a big van that controls poorly, other times a high speed sports car with top grip (in the races we played the game chose the set of cars for each race so you didn’t end up with the van racing against the sports car). There are 20 cars on the track, a feature Activision-Blizzard pointed out numerous times, and rightly so, very few racers include that many cars on the track at once, especially in multiplayer, and it makes for a more exciting race.

It’s partly necessary to have so many cars in the race because there is no form of catch-up mechanic in place. The last place driver goes at the same speed as the first place driver, and the power-ups are not randomly chosen but chosen by the player by driving over a brightly coloured icon which means the last place driver has the same set of power-ups to choose from as the first. It was indicated by the Activision-Blizzard representatives that the game is meant to appeal to a broader audience than other racing games, but without catch-up logic or stronger power-ups races are likely to be foregone conclusions as the better driver takes first place. This might be a plus to you, but if I want to play a serious racing game on the 360 I would start up PGR or Forza, so I feel Blur could do with a bit more mayhem and randomness to make it that much more of a unique experience.

The game includes a bunch of social-networking features too but I didn’t get a chance to look at them. Clearly online gamers are being targeted - gamers who play online regularly and use games as a vehicle for getting together with friends over the Internet. After each race you get a bunch of ku…oops, I mean fans, for things you did in the race such as taking d…, I mean shunting, opponents. These fans are added to your rating in a similar manner to GamerScore. There is a single player component in the game but it’s clear from the style of play that multiplayer is where the fun is going to be.

The Blur formula is a good one - a combination of arcade racing (but not so arcade-like as Burnout or Ridge Racer), power-ups to harrass your opponent, smooth networked play, easy game setup with an attractive lobby interface and 20 players in a race. It will be exciting to see what tweaks Bizarre come up with to improve gameplay even more - I would like to see at least a few more power-ups, or more powerful ones, a way for players behind to catch up in some way, and more blur!

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