But I’m here today to talk about a racing game that I have very much enjoyed, despite a few problems: Split/Second. The central conceit is that the racers are participating in a reality game show, playing through a season through a series of episodes that each consist of 4-6 competitions. Some of the competitions are races, some are time challenges, and others are pure survival stages. To add some reality TV-style spice to the proceedings, there are various traps set up around the courses which can be activated by the drivers, resulting in explosions, collapsed buildings, and other inconveniences that can cause opponents to wreck in spectacular fashion.
The Story
The tracks are all part of a massive chunk of studio real estate that bears a striking resemblance to Seattle, complete with an airfield, port, downtown viaduct and other bridges, and something that could only be described as Space Needle-esque. There is also a track that seems more like a river gorge area, and one that seems to run through a nuclear power plant. A few of the tracks overlap in parts, which is kind of disappointing. True to the reality show theme, the game pits you against a variety of challenges which can play to your strengths and weaknesses. By far the most fun and interesting challenges are the races, followed closely by the Detonator and Elimination events. Race Mode features an 8 car field, with all the traps, or Power Plays, armed and ready. In Elimination Mode, there is a timer running that eliminates the last place car after a minute of racing, and every 15 seconds thereafter, until only one car remains. It’s a fairly common occurrence to be in first or second position, only to crash and be passed by the field with only a few seconds left on the elimination clock. In Detonator Mode, you race solo against the clock while the game activates Power Play events (i.e. tries to kill you). The other two events that I’ve encountered thus far (both solo time course events) are just annoying. In Air Strike, you are targeted by a missile-laden helicopter, and Survival has you trying to pass a seemingly endless string of tractor-trailers that are spilling explosive barrels into your path. The many ground-level explosions that buffet your vehicle in these events throw your car out of control, which is a pretty frustrating experience. More annoying, no matter how well I run these courses in the later episodes, I can never come close to cracking the top 2 times. As in, I need to somehow shave 10-15 seconds off my time.
The Cars
As I said, this is no RPG. Forget about gradually improving your intake, or adding airfoils or other minutia. Here, you start with 3 cars from the storied Hanzo, Cobretti, and Ryback corporations. As you win races, you win credits. Eventually, you earn enough credits for a new car, but you do not get to choose the car. Instead, the game extravagantly bestows upon you the next car in the series, revealing its stats. The stats indicate relative Speed, Acceleration, Toughness, and Drift. Toughness describes how well the car stands up to interactions with explosive things and other cars, and Drift describes the degree to which the back end will come around when you powerbrake around a corner. A lot of Acceleration and Drift can make for an interesting driving experience. Some cars are all Acceleration, making them very touchy, and some are more balanced. I enjoyed most of the cars, but I find the driving experience with the rally-style trucks to be not particularly "realistic" or fun.
I only have one grouse about the car system, and it’s a pretty specific grievance: I finally won a car that had solid stats in every category, and I couldn’t wait to get it on the track. In my first race with it, I placed last. Then 7th. Then last again. I raced on three different courses for at least 15 stubborn races and never placed better than 6th, before I realized that my car was only barely faster than the field, but had liabilities in acceleration and drift, such that I would have to run a perfect race while maintaining enough power to continually take out people in front of me with Power Plays. The trouble being that if they got too far ahead, I couldn’t trigger events, and I’d never catch them. So this awesome car generates an upgraded field, while backing away to a weaker car results in a weaker field that I could beat rather handily.
The Driving Experience
This is where the game really shines. After a short time behind the wheel, you get a really good idea of how your car is going to perform in different situations. I think the illusion of speed is as good as I’ve seen in any racing game. It helps that the graphics are top-notch, the field of view is uncluttered by a ton of status stuff, and that long, flat straightaways are kept to a minimum. You can toggle between a bumper-cam view (which is too close to the ground for me) or the 3rd person view from about 15 feet behind your car. There is no speedometer-- just a timer and your current race position shown at the bottom center of the screen. Oh, and your power meter. You fill up your power meter by drifting, jumping, and drafting behind other vehicles. If your meter is at least ⅓ full, you can trigger an event on a rival vehicle when it is near or approaching a trap. If the meter is all the way full, you can trigger an extra devastating event, or one that fundamentally alters a huge section of the race track (usually demolishing several cars in the process). You have to learn where the traps are, and what they do, in order to effectively demolish the competition and avoid getting pancaked yourself. This is in addition to needing to find the perfect line through the course, and learning how to min/max your car's capabilities. And I must say, gaining the achievement for wrecking 3 cars under a collapsed nuclear cooling tower (High Pipe)? Priceless.
In terms of a racing experience, there is a bit of rubber-banding, where the leaders never get too far away, and you can often overtake them with solid driving in the final lap. The game does get less forgiving in the later episodes, where one wreck can put the leader out of reach. What’s worse is that the other vehicles never seem to trigger events on each other, even when there is a clear opportunity for one car to outright win the race by wrecking the lead car. This makes the Season Championship standings a little bogus, as it is always me and the same 2 other cars in the top 3 slots. I feel like the other cars in the field are just there to make my life miserable.
The Production
Not bad. It has a cool graphic opening that can be skipped past, and intuitive menus. It takes about 4 button presses to get to your current game, and there’s not a lot of lag between menus. My biggest complaint about the production (and the game overall) is the loading screens to get from the menu to the actual race. It can feel like forever. Once you have loaded a race, you can retry the race without the loading screens, but if you want to change cars, you have to exit and reload the race. It can really kill the pace and excitement of the game. In addition to the story mode, the game offers a Quick Race mode, an Xbox Live mode, and a Split Screen mode for 2 player face to face (which I haven’t tried yet).
At any rate, I’ve been having a blast with it. The traps are really fun, and there are quite a few, "Did you see that???" moments. It’s from Disney/Black Rock which is now, sadly, dismantled, but there is some DLC content available. I recommend this without hesitation if you enjoy racing games, but not if you need to have control over the vehicle building process.
(image from kusohappens.com)
