Quite a blast, literally.

I first downloaded the demo for Split/Second about two weeks before I received the full game for review. I came away from the demo with a poor taste in my mouth and it made me apprehensive about playing the full title. Then I played the first few races of the full game and my opinion did not change. However, by the time I played my first elite race, my mind was changed. The game is fantastic! Split/Second has a great sense of speed, a plethora of courses and cars, excellent graphics and sound, an online play mode, basically everything you would want from a great racing title; except for a free roam world. I guess I was spoiled by Burnout Paradise by that option.

In Split/Second you race to the finish line in a similar fashion as other racing games. The game is supposed to play out like a TV show season and is divided up into twelve "episodes". Each episode is comprised of four regular races, plus a bonus race and an elite race. If you wreck enough of your opponents during the regular races with power plays (more on this later) then you unlock the bonus race. Wining a race nets you credits which are used to unlock the elite races in each episode. Place third or above in the elite race for your current episode and you move on to the next episode. Every so many credits you unlock a new, faster vehicle to race with. Most of this is pretty similar to other racing games I have played. The main difference between Split/Second and other racing games is that you have control of explosions, and other switched events, rigged to go off at a moments notice. Is there an opponent getting ahead of you? Hit the "X" and cause the helicopter hovering above the road a little ahead to drop an explosive drum on them. Did you crash and find yourself in last place while a group of opponents speed off into the distance? Cause the bridge ahead of them to collapse on top of them. While you may be thinking that it doesn't seem like a complex enough mechanic to build an entire race game around, you are only partially correct. Luckily the game also throws in several game modes and levels to keep it somewhat fresh. As I mentioned previously, the game seemed kind of lackluster for lack of a better, more politically correct, term when I first played the demo. It stayed that way, in my mind, until the first elite race, perhaps even until the second elite race. Do you want to know what finally won me over? The game modes and the unlocked cars are what did it, but mostly it was the unlocked cars. In the beginning of the game I didn't get any sense of speed. Nothing is more frustrating to me than a racing game in which the car you are driving makes you want to get out and walk because you might get to the end faster. And sadly, that is how I felt for a long while. But once I started wining races I unlocked more and more cars. Once I got a fast car my whole impression of the game changed. I didn't recognize it at first, what with everything blowing up around me and all, but I eventually began to see the signs that I was actually beginning to become excited about this game. My heart started beating like crazy, I found myself standing up as I was coming to the finish line time and again and a couple of times I actually had to put the controller down and walk away to calm down for the next race.

Racing for the sake of racing is fine but why not completely destroy the competition while you are at it? Well, Split/Second allows you to do just that, to literally destroy the competition with what the developers call power plays. To perform a power play the player has to drift, perform jumps, have close calls with power plays by coming very close to but escaping a power play without crashing and by drafting the other racers. When any of these actions are performed, a large gauge under your car starts to fill up. Once filled to the first or second lines you are able to perform a level one power play; which drains the gauge down by one unit. When filled up to the third and final line you are able to perform a level two power play; which drains the gauge completely. Level one power plays can cause cliff walls to blast apart and fall on to the track, engage cranes to move or drop barriers, cause smoke stacks to ignite and plummet on to the course or any number of other fantastically destructive moves. Level two power plays are much more devastating versions of level one power plays. They are so much more powerful, in fact, that they usually cause the race track to change course, due to the amount of wreckage and damage they wrought. You say you want to stop and enjoy the devastation but you are too busy trying not to crash and die? No problem, with some of the power plays you are able to press a button to watch a replay of the action.

Of course you are not the only one that can cause power plays to occur. The competition is fully capable of pulling off their own power plays; which can be extremely irritating when you worked so hard to stay in first place only to find yourself crashed and placed at the back of the pack right at the end of the race. You have to quickly get used to moments like that because they happen all the time in Split/Second. Within one race I found myself in first only to be destroyed by a power play and put in sixth place; I then worked myself back up to third place only to be destroyed again; which put me back in eighth. I then eventually worked myself back into first place again. It is pretty rare for this to happen in most other racing games but not in this one. You can almost count on getting obliterated and put back three cars or more on a regular basis. If you are lucky, hopefully the game will not start you off after a crash at full speed pointed directly at the thing that previously destroyed your car. That has happened at least five times to me. Obviously, I crashed way more than five times, so it is an insignificant amount, but it is still very irritating.

The game has six game modes and eleven race locations to try and keep the game interesting. In Survival you must race around a track that is populated by tractor trailer trucks that spit explosive barrels out the rear. Avoid the exploding barrels and pass as many trucks as possible before the timer runs out for maximum points. In Air Strike you race around a track attempting to survive missile attacks from a helicopter raining down on you from above. Again, survive as long as possible for maximum points. In Air Revenge you can fight back against the helicopter by performing power plays. In this mode you try to bring down the helicopter as fast as possible to beat your opponents. The other three modes are pretty standard fare; Race, where you race like normal, Detonator, where you race by yourself with power plays auto engaged and Elimination, where a competitor is knocked out of the race every so often.

To determine your overall standing in the game you car is painted with a number correlating to your position. You start off at 99 and work your way up to 1. In addition to this visual representation of your position, the car also shows your achievements in the way of stickers. Every time you get a trophy you earn a sticker that represents that trophy on the car. I don't know why, but I love this idea. The only thing better would have been to allow sticker customization allowing the player to place the stickers on the car where ever the player chooses.

At first, when the game was first loading, my wife thought I was playing Burnout Paradise when she saw all of the buildings. While she is by no means whatsoever, at all, in any way shape or form, an expert on the subject of graphics she did have a point. The city landscape looked very familiar but it was quite a bit better than that of Burnout, not to put down Burnout, as it is still my favorite racing game. The sound, however, blows Burnout out of the water. The explosions are epic sounding and the music really got me going. My wife had to repeatedly tell me to turn down the game, which I promptly ignored because I was doing game review "research".

Any game, racing game or otherwise, that wants to be big these days needs to have online multiplayer and Split/Second has it. Unfortunately, however it is very basic with just three game modes supported (Race, Survival and Elimination). On top of that, the online component seemed a bit buggy at this point. One time I was playing Survival mode and the semi trucks were not throwing out any bombs at all. I raced around the track and could see the others getting thrown into the air but I could not see any reason why it was happening. Needless to say, I got first place, but it really cheated the other players. In most other games this would not matter, but with Split/Second each online player has a level. This level is affected by the outcome of every race you take place in, so I got a large level boost while some of the other's levels were lowered unfairly. In another instance I was waiting for a race to start and the clock counted down to zero and still the game did not start. It started counting down again and again but the game never started. After canceling out and going back into the online area I was able to get back online but by then my racing group was dispersed.

Being that online play is so important; you may think that there would be lots of options for creating or filtering races. You would be wrong. There is no way to create an online match of any type, except a private race. Most of the time when I would try to start a game I would have to wait for people who are currently racing to finish a race. This wouldn't be a problem if they didn't just start the race. Therefore, I have to sit and wait for them to finish an entire race before I can race. Why the developers didn't decide to allow the player the option to create an online match and have as many or few people as wanted (up to a maximum) join in is beyond me. Once I was finally placed in a race it was often with opponents that had far superior cars and were dozens of levels above my current standing. This would put me at a huge disadvantage and I would usually lose which would, in turn, lower my online level. Again, why not allow some control over the type of race the player wanted to race? At least do some grouping so lower level players only race with other lower lever racers.

In addition to the online multiplayer, Split/Second allows offline multiplayer for up to one of your friends. In this offline multiplayer you can play any of the game modes and levels that you are able to play in the single player quick play mode; which allows the player to replay almost any of the previous races, minus the elite races, without being in season mode. Who would want to do this? No idea. I think I would rather just play the levels in the normal season in case I performed better than I previously did, there by gaining me some additional credits; but I digress. The developers did, however, include a two player option for the discerning racing game enthusiast; including the ability to split the screen in either the horizontal or vertical alignment.

My friends were really excited initially to play the game and also felt the same as I did after the demo. Because of that they didn't buy it and I wouldn't have either. After playing it for an extended period of time, I think it is a great game and would recommend it to anyone who is on the fence and loves racing games. Unfortunately, the candle on this game burns out a little too quickly, with only a few modes supported for online play; so for the rest of the general public, I suggesting waiting until the game comes down in price for a better value.