Split\/Second<\/a> is incredibly silly. It\u2019s stupendously silly and you should probably buy it right now because it\u2019s not only silly but fantastic, exhilarating fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can forget about the set up, it\u2019s guff. You\u2019re in a TV series it would seem and the show revolves around people racing cars really fast whilst things explode around them. Obviously. It\u2019s not quite Year Of The Sex Olympics stuff here but I dunno, if you can get I\u2019m A Celebrity, Let Me Out Of Here on air this probably isn\u2019t quite as far fetched as I\u2019d like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that\u2019s all you really need to know about Split\/Second right there in that set up. You race cars really fast and things explode around you. There\u2019s even a button you can press to make things explode around the other racers and try and blow them off the track in a ball of flame. Ah man, now we\u2019re talking videogames. I like videogames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a game I\u2019m banned from playing whilst the kid is around. Mrs Bob says that muttering the sort of swear words I have been is possibly not the best language to be teaching a young child and that\u2019s not something I can really argue with. Split\/Second makes me swear like a sweary man but y\u2019know, it\u2019s a good swear. The kind that you utter when a fantastic Geometry Wars:RE run gets brought to a sudden halt by you doing something incredibly idiotic like walking into the black hole as you were too busy looking over there. Yes, over there. See, you missed that didn\u2019t you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wants you to win. Which is, seemingly, in stark contrast to most racing games made in the past couple of years that want you to work instead. Split\/Second isn\u2019t about realistic racing, realistic crash modelling or as my brief experience with one of the Need For Speed series shown, tattoos, emo street kids and tits. It\u2019s about having some screaming fun and getting to see the next track and the next bag of tricks it\u2019s got up its sleeve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yeah, there\u2019s a point where you spot the mouse in the mouse organ and realise how much the game wants you to win and progress and in many games, that\u2019d be enough for me to put it right down the moment it dawned. I\u2019m having way, way too much fun though to care about what\u2019s going on under the hood. I was having so much fun during my time with Split\/Second that it could have thrown a picture of a haddock up on the screen, called my mother a rude name and shot my cat and I\u2019d probably still sit there going \u201coh go on then, I\u2019ll just do this next race and see what I can bring down onto the track next\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not all of the game modes are an out and out success, there\u2019s a mixed bag of attempts at fucking with the game\u2019s formula of which, the helicopter runs are easily the weakest. A bland \u201cavoid the target\u201d session around the track that on paper, reading \u201cyou\u2019re being pursued by a helicopter trying to bomb your face off\u201d sounds far more exciting than it actually is in practice. I can forgive that though. I can forgive anything for the moments I was near out of my seat, ducking between exploding barrels dumped from the back of some sort of Mad Max meets Duel nightmare truck at supermassive speeds getting what I believe might be termed as \u201cthe fucking claw\u201d from the controller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stuff that works far outweighs the stuff that doesn\u2019t and heck, at least Split\/Second bloody well tries to mix things up. It\u2019d be rude not to applaud that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And applaud Split\/Second I will. Big cheery sweary sweaty applause. With an owl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s probably my game of the year so far and the first racer since Outrun 2 I\u2019ve wanted to just play and play again. That it seems to have slipped between the cracks amongst a fuckton of other big releases this year is a damn shame. It\u2019s bloody brilliant and doesn\u2019t deserve that fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Go on, give it some love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rutger Hauer\/10<\/em> -1 point for orange & teal.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOriginally posted on We Make The Cops Look Dumb, November 9th 2010<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the archives I\u2019m not the greatest fan of racing games. Actually, scratch that \u2013 I\u2019m not the greatest fan of racing games that aren\u2019t Outrun 2. Yet I still end up buying them. Clearly, I\u2019m not right. Just a quick glance at some of the stuff I\u2019ve bought over the past 18 months or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"More archive rummaging, Split\/Second write up rescued from 2010. #TombOfTat","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[79,94,93,92,95,91,90],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames","tag-archive","tag-burnout-paradise","tag-fuel","tag-grid","tag-outrun-2","tag-split-second","tag-we-make-the-cops-look-dumb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}