Customer Reviews

Blur

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The main reason why I've made this review is purely because of the review right below me, which complains about requiring a "separate video card" to play. But I'll get to that in a moment.

This is basically a fast paced arcade racer with powerups. Take a game like Gran Turismo and mix it in with some Mario Kart powerups, and you have this awesome, awesome game. The goal of the game is to drive around in your vehicle of choice, all of them real life cars, and basically blast each other to smithereens with powerups that are strewn throughout the track. Driving is VERY arcade style - you can accelerate, brake, and e-brake and you steer left and right. Handling is fairly straightforward. Cars handle very much like they do in Ridge Racer. Instead of getting busted up after just one hit from an attack, your car has a health meter, which goes down as you take hits from enemy attacks. If your health meter depletes, your car gets wrecked, and you're put out of commission for a short period. You can pick up powerups to repair your car back to full health so this doesn't happen, but that can get challenging when you have 19 other players trying to fight for first place. Yes you heard me, you can have up to 20 opponents racing simultaneously, both in single player and multiplayer mode!

That's the basic mechanics. Variety-wise, you have multiple modes you can choose from. You have Blur's equivalent of Last Man Standing, where your main goal is to just smash the daylights out of your opponents, racing, where you go around a track and try to get first place while fighting off attacks from your opponents, hardcore "simulation" racing, where powerups are disabled and your racing skills are put to the test, team modes, and much more.

Plus, the game has unlockables both in single player AND multiplayer mode which are earned through "bulbs" from placing as one of the top 3 in races and through fans you gain from blowing other cars up, completing in-course challenges, and doing fancy moves like drifts - these are basically more or less like points. You can actually play multiplayer LOCALLY (great LAN party game!), online, or even do a 4 player split screen with four controllers (freakin insane). As you gain fans and bulbs, you unlock more mods, more cars, and more courses and game modes to play. Since the unlockables are available for both single player and multiplayer modes, you'll have twice the amount of replayability, and you'll still have a very solid single player game even if you can't go multiplayer. The online play is dedicated, so you don't have to worry about the host getting any sort of ping advantage.

Oh, and this game has NO rubber band AI. If you get in front, however, expect to be attacked by the "blue shell" of this game, a powerup that drops 3 pits of lightning that will damage and slow down your car (but they can be dodged, unlike the blue shell). The AI is challenging because it is quite relentless in its aggression and will do whatever it takes to stop you from gaining first. They will smash into you, launch powerups, and gang up on you if it means they'll get past you. They'll dodge your attacks, purposely block you from picking up powerups, and generally do what a regular player will do to win. And if the action is too hard for you, you can dial down the difficulty to something a bit more manageable too.

Soundtrack is excellent, a bit of techno and rock mixed in. Nothing out of this world spectacular, but nothing that particularly bad. You'll be too busy spending most of your time smashing up other cars to really care.

Unfortunately, this game does not support a third party controller. It does support XBox 360 controllers. You can use 3rd party software out there to have your regular controller emulate a XBox 360 controller, however, and IMO this game definitely needs a gamepad for you to get the fullest out of it. The other problem here, however, is that the game doesn't allow you to customize the controls, only pick from a small set of preconfigured layouts, which is very un-PC-like. You can play this game on keyboard, and it's still very playable on it, so don't let the lack of direct third party controller support stop you!

Graphics are top notch. Everything looks well done, incredibly detailed, and very colorful. The cars look a little bit too shiny, and that fits in well with the overall theme of the game, which has more of a hyper-realistic/fantasy feel to it than it actually looking like real life. This makes sense, as the game lets you use powerups that you'll NEVER see in real life and be able to bust up expensive cars that we'll never get to drive. The game is also rather light on the graphics card; I'm running at full framerate with a GTX 260 at 1680 x 1050. Unfortunately, you can't tweak the graphics settings that much like you can in other games - you just have a general setting to adjust the visual detail and the ability to switch off or on fullscreen and vsync and change the antialiasing. That con makes the game feel like a somewhat not 100%-done PC port, since the game doesn't try that hard to take advantage of what makes the PC a unique gaming platform: the ability to run games at graphics settings that surpass that of their console counterparts.

Lastly, I'd like to address the poster below me who bought this game. This is a CURRENT GENERATION PC game that is meant for GAMERS. If you've never bought a PC game before, you will learn your first responsibility is to look up the system requirements, which are easily available online. If you want to play any half-decent PC game, you WILL need a separate graphics card (and not even a ridiculously expensive one!), which will allow you to play the game with graphics that will surpass those of the consoles. There are PC games out there that can work with integrated graphics cards, yes, but those are actually the *EXCEPTION* instead of the rule. Please, PLEASE do not rate this game one star for something you failed to look up yourself. For anyone else, buy this game! Although it lacks the configurability of most PC-native games, it's still fun, and is cheaper than its console versions. With the price drop on Amazon, it's actually cheaper to buy it here than Steam too!

This seems to be a racing season. A number of new racing games have been or are to be released. But not all GTs are created equal.

Only last week I was playing Split/Second and now the long awaited BLUR is out. Since both games are more Arcade-racers than Simulators, I decided to do a side-by-side review.

What BLUR has over SPLIT/SECOND:
(a) Licensed cars. Fantasy cars look great but it is always more satisfying to drive real supercars. Yes, that means you have to start with the obligatory stupid compacts - but good ones get unlocked soon.
(b) Much better music. Disney simply dropped the ball here, SPLIT/SECOND is in dire need for some epic music to go with the blockbuster mentality.
(c) You have a map that shows both your and your opponents' positions, something I would have liked in SPLIT/SECOND.
(d) More realistic damage (keyword: "more"). SPLIT/SECOND crashes are realistically spectacular but you can body-slam anything forever and the only thing that shows are some...scratches. BLUR is no simulator but it is more realistic (for a game that offers power-up repairs that is) - unless you dislike driving a car with its rear spoiler hanging out.
(e) You get a usable rear-view mirror (for as long as you can keep it from cracking). In SPLIT/SECOND you have to use the NUM-2 to sneak a peak back - and risk crashing since you cannot look both ways.
(f) No rubber-band AI. You earn a margin, you get to keep it. It may be less thrilling all the time but it saves you the aggravation of driving your heart out only to loose the No.1 position by a cheap pass at the very last second.

On the other hand, this is where I found SPLIT/SECOND to be better than BLUR:
(a) Much more spectacular driving. Drifting, drafting, jumping and, of course, exploding things is simply so much better than activating a white shield or firing some feeble electric charges.
(b) Better designed and larger tracks that can even be modified during a race.
(c) Less complicated. In SPLIT/SECOND you just drive, drop an exploding truck (or an entire...freeway) onto your opponents and avoid the same happening to you. In BLUR you have to choose and pick up power-ups (max of 3), select the next one, aim and fire at your target; you have to pick up and use the repair power-up to maintain the health of your car; you have to drive through a number of yellow gates to win over fans in order to unlock more cars; and then you have to earn lights to advance (I guess it had to be something, but ..."lights"?).
(d) Customizable controls. Come on ACTIVISION, this is not 1995, why do we have to use both ends of the keyboard to drive a car in BLUR? Turn left and right with the L/R arrows yet accelerate and brake with the Q- and A-keys? And someone thought this to be such a good idea that there is no customization option? Well, now you know what must be included in the next patch.

Different gamers have, of course, different preferences, so some of the above mentioned aspects may weight differently to everyone. Both games harbor SecuROM disk-checks, so their DRM scheme is comparable.
Nevertheless, in the end, where I think BLUR clearly lags behind SPLIT/SECOND is the pure fun factor. I know this is subjective but I enjoyed SPLIT/SECOND much more than I did BLUR.

I would never though the day would come that I would be recommending a ...Disney game over an Activision one.
But life is full of surprises.

This is a great game! Fun to play online (potentially at least), and fun to play on splitscreen, too,

I just love the Mario Kart with real cars and places concept. I got almost everything I was expecting out of it. Maybe the car roster wasn't as rich as I hoped (okay, that just means it doesn't feature the Subaru Impreza STI, nor the Aston Martins), but still you get your Camaros, Corvettes, BMWs, Mustangs, etc.

I say give it a shot. You'll have a ton of fun.

I'll also say that after over 5 years of playing Trackmania on a weekly basis, this game is at fault for finally making me quit the habit.

Okay, let me start off by listing ALL of the racing games I have ever bought:

Rad Racer (NES)
Super Mario Kart (SNES)
18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker (DC)
Mario Kart Double Dash!! (GC)
Mario Kart Wii (Wii)

I think Mario Kart is one of the best games ever (say what you will about the rubber band gameplay, it's the only game I can play competitively with my wife and she still has a chance to win).

Blur takes that system of powerups and knocking out your opponent and adds real cars and realistic tracks. It's fast, clean, and a lot of fun. There's a lot to unlock. Most races have three goals - winning, collecting fans, and passing a fan challenge. Winning is obvious. Collecting fans is done by smashing up your opponents. Fan challenges consist of racing through a series of gates at high speed. You can complete each goal independently, so if you want, you can race the first time to win and worry about the fans later.

I haven't experienced any glitches and yes, this is on the PC (WinXP 32-bit). On my $50 NVidia video card, I'm able to play the game at full everything with a high framerate (I haven't used FRAPS yet to calculate exactly what it is). My Logitech Rumblepad 2 works, except for L2 and R2 buttons and the rumble feature, by using the x360ce vibmod 3.1.4.0 driver, which makes the Rumblepad look like an XBox 360 controller.

I have to say I'm a little disappointed by the lack of support for non-360 controllers out of the box. I was going to buy a racing wheel, but now I'm wondering if the game will properly support it or not...

The only drawbacks to this game:
-Long install time (it copies the entire DVD over)
-Medium length load times (15-25 seconds)
-Lack of proper controller support

And finally, on the DRM front, this uses Securom for a DVD-in-the-drive check and it does NOT require an Internet connection. Thank you Activision for giving us a reasonable level of DRM.

(5 stars)I love this game. The weapons are very well balanced, most of them can be used for offensive or defensive counters, so you don't pick up useless weapons when you are in first place. The driving and feel of the cars is good, however the balance on them is skewed or maybe it's just me. The tutorial and tips say to tailor the car you have for the map, but I've found that picking the fastest, newest one always works the best, the drift/grip/speed concept doesn't really work out, so all the old cars become obsolete.

(-1 star)I do have a major gripe with the developer/publisher because of the so called "3rd party" (IE: NOT XBOX) controllers. If you have a PC game, take the time to make sure stuff works with it, or don't get into deals with MS to try and rip people off. The good news is that you can use an Xbox control emulator. [...]
Really hope they get a patch out that has controller support without needing to work around it.

I played the demo of Blur on Xbox 360 and enjoyed it and was going to get it for that or PS3 when it came out but I have a beefy PC too so once I saw the $20 price difference it was a no brainer so picked it up for PC. Game plays amazing, and it's a ton of fun. It's a lot like a Mario Kart for adults, or a re-imagination of that old 3DO pack in game Crash N Burn which is still one of my favorite racers ever. It has amazing graphics, runs perfectly smooth at 40-50fps cranked up @ 1920x1200 on my quad core Q9650, 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX 285, on Windows 7 64bit. The online play works great too and has enough people playing to always be able to hop on and find some fellow gamers to play with. Also I'm using a PS3 dualshock gamepad with it hooked up to USB and using MotionJoy software that allows that to work and it works perfect as I expected it would. The gameplay gets pretty challenging too about halfway in but that's a good thing in my opinion, I like a challenge. Some really awesome looking tracks too, especially the one on the boardwalk at night with fireworks and wet dirt and pavement, very cool.

Definitely a must buy for racing fans, highly recommended!

Normally, I don't write a review, but I really hope to save other people the $35. There is a lot of potential in this game, but unfortunately the problems on the PC version of the game are crippling. From what many other people have been saying (here and elsewhere), you're probably best off with an XBOX version of this game.

I got the game shortly after it was released in May. Here we are two months later and no substantial patches to the PC version. The multiplayer base is still at a maximum of 200 players at any given time during the day.

The reasons for the lack of a thriving multiplayer experience have been mentioned in other reviews:

--- Total and complete lack of voice or even text chat in the lobbies. This is a HUGE problem.
--- The problems with setting up controls. I have to use 3rd party software to program my wireless controller to keyboard keys.
--- Frames Per Second problems when there are a lot of cars on the track or on certain tracks. I've had the game come to a complete halt for 5 seconds on one track. My rig is well beyond the recommended requirements; this should not be happening.

And if you think the singleplayer will redeem the game, no not really. I blew through it in about 2 days.

All in all, I feel ripped off for buying this game. They really didn't put much effort into porting this for PC. If they fix the problems with it sometime in the future, it would totally redeem itself. But until then, I'll just play something else and free up my hard drive space.

It plays good, although the AI opponents are pretty easy to beat, and just dont seem very realistic. Still a fun game though. Graphics are great as well. Trying to play 4 player split screen is what knocks off a star. 2 player is doable with a keyboard and a controller, but even with ther different controllers, it wont recognize them, and when it does, you control multiple peoples car with one controller sometimes. It is seriously bugged in multiplayer. Decent game overall.

it is not the best out there. (i prefer split second) but a great game still. if you have 360 controllers then its even better. if not then its still not bad. you just have to get a work around like xpadder or joytokey or something.

main thing i love about the game is that its pretty much mario kart but with realistic cars. so if you want a mario kart game but not the childish look and want to drive regular cars then this is the game. it also has split screen for up to 4 players on the same pc. however i have yet to figure that out without having 360 controllers. i have been able to do 2 players with a 360 controller and my logitech controller. being i use xpadder and so my logitech is basically my keyboard. i am hoping to try and get those knock off 360 controllers that are cheap and see if they will work. if not return and maybe get another 360 controller or 2. but for now 2 players is fun to race my kids with or let them race.

and you can set up different gametypes as well like a regular race with no power ups. or race with power ups. and i think there are a couple more.

i have many racing games and this and split second are one of my favorites. but again it depends on what i am wanting to play. if a regular racing game then i would go with my other games like grid or something else.

also sonic racing is fun as well. and another game that you have to get a work around for if you dont have 360 controllers.

While playing the game you will quickly understand why this is fun: it's something different, which is something hard to accomplish in the racing genre. It's not as aggressive Burnout but not as theatrical as Split/Second either. As always, there's room for improvement (ie: more diverse customization and an actual story line) but the concept was introduced successfully.

I wouldn't compare it entirely to Mario Kart because that game had characters and this game does not, which would be another area they can improve on in a sequel.

I used my Afterglow Xbox 360 controller to play and it worked perfectly, although, the game still displayed the PC controls in the menu and gameplay interface but it only takes a couple minutes to get used to since the options have the 360 controls layout with a couple presets you can choose from.