Game Review: Split/Second Velocity
Split/Second is the latest game from Brighton’s Black Rock Studios, previouslt known for their ATV and Pure games. The premise for this new racer is a Death Race-style reality TV show where an entire city has been built as a set for racers to blast round at top speeds. However, as you whip round the tracks, you can trigger “power plays” which destroy large parts of the track, or send massive obstacles careering into your opponents.
The whole package works quite neatly, with the single player campaign, or TV season, broken up into episodes, each of which feature a number of different race types that you need to complete for points, in order to progress to the next episode. It is reminiscent of the systems popular in the older Burnouts and games like Stuntman Ignition. The advent of the open world racer kind of makes this look a little antiquated, but it still works nonetheless.
Some of the power plays are quite breathtaking, with huge skyscrapers collapsing and changing the actual track itself, and completely changing the race at times. The smaller power plays are equally useful, throwing dumpster trucks onto the track or exploding oil barrels right by your opponents.
This is one of the most fun and inventive racers of recent years, and is successful because while other, narrative based games and genres try to borrow from Hollywood in terms of dialogue, narrative and presentation, Split/Second takes the bombast and explosions from summer blockbusters and transplants them into a racing game format. The end product is a game that has the extreme high-speed thrills of Midnight Club, the constant sense of navigating deadly obstacles from Stuntman, and the huge production values and spectacle of a Michael Bay film.
