Blur Catch-All

I wanted to like it, but the driving itself wasn't that great. Drifting is not as fun or intuitive as Mario Kart, Burnout, or Motorstorm and that really kills it for me. The grippier cars couldn't be drifted and the looser cars lost too much momentum while drifting. Give me any one of the above games any day.

I would love this game if it were just Burnout plus weapons.

EDIT: Great idea for the makers of Burnout, there!

Hmm, the game does not work on my computer.

Rumour has it that the PC port is, to use a technical term, utterly f*cked.

Avoid.

Damn, and I was really looking forward to this one.

BTW, if you want to see just how bad it is, look no further.

It's bad.

I'm having the hardest time deciding between this or Alan Wake.

I have twenty bucks in credit, so I could get this for thirty out of pocket, Wake for twenty.

It's sad when you're worried about buying a game at full price because you think it'll be ten or twenty dollars cheaper *the week after release*.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm having the hardest time deciding between this or Alan Wake.

I have twenty bucks in credit, so I could get this for thirty out of pocket, Wake for twenty.

It's sad when you're worried about buying a game at full price because you think it'll be ten or twenty dollars cheaper *the week after release*.

Alan Wake, easy. Blur, and its competitor Split/Second, will both be had for $30 before summer is over.

Jayhawker wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm having the hardest time deciding between this or Alan Wake.

I have twenty bucks in credit, so I could get this for thirty out of pocket, Wake for twenty.

It's sad when you're worried about buying a game at full price because you think it'll be ten or twenty dollars cheaper *the week after release*.

Alan Wake, easy. Blur, and its competitor Split/Second, will both be had for $30 before summer is over.

If that much. I predict Split Second and Blur will both be found on various sales and bargain bins for $20 before too long. They both seem to have bargain bin written all over them.

And I agree with Jayhawker, Alan Wake is the easy choice.

I lost an hour easy to blur last night.

I have a lot of white-knuckled fun on the 360.

EDIT: To clarify, I lose track of time when racing in the online multiplayer.

The single player I'm not really interested in and the split-screen is utterly meh.

One thing to consider with Blur v. Alan Wake: Alan Wake is SP and will be relevant and fun for as long as the 360 is around. Blur, where the enjoyment is to be had in MP, will cease being as fun when the community goes to the next shiny thing...unless you are playing the 4 player split-screen and have people to do it with regularly.

Mister Magnus wrote:

the split-screen is utterly meh.

Why?

Jeff-66 wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm having the hardest time deciding between this or Alan Wake.

I have twenty bucks in credit, so I could get this for thirty out of pocket, Wake for twenty.

It's sad when you're worried about buying a game at full price because you think it'll be ten or twenty dollars cheaper *the week after release*.

Alan Wake, easy. Blur, and its competitor Split/Second, will both be had for $30 before summer is over.

If that much. I predict Split Second and Blur will both be found on various sales and bargain bins for $20 before too long. They both seem to have bargain bin written all over them.

And I agree with Jayhawker, Alan Wake is the easy choice.

My roommate actually brought home Wake from the Redbox a little while after I posted here, and I'm a little cooler on Alan Wake than I had originally thought. The controls feel squirrelly (There's an abundance of seemingly unused buttons and you put sprint and dodge on the same one?) and the manuscript pages' tendency to spoil the action kinda bothers me.

Blur's multiplayer has the potential to be a MW style go-to summer time sink, Wake seems to be a linear, one-shot rental. I've made my choice.

And for the record, I dumped the Split/Second demo after about 3 minutes. That driving feels really cruddy, and the powerplays are too often out of my range of vision.

Jayhawker wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm having the hardest time deciding between this or Alan Wake.

I have twenty bucks in credit, so I could get this for thirty out of pocket, Wake for twenty.

It's sad when you're worried about buying a game at full price because you think it'll be ten or twenty dollars cheaper *the week after release*.

Alan Wake, easy. Blur, and its competitor Split/Second, will both be had for $30 before summer is over.

It's not much more than that already, seeing as how it launched at $40 on Steam.

Which is still a lot to ask for a game that as far as I can tell consists entirely of an intro video followed by a black screen.

MisterStatic wrote:
Mister Magnus wrote:

the split-screen is utterly meh.

Why?

Well, it splits the screen funny, for one. We played three-player split screen and P1 gets the top half of real-estate (but not the whole thing, just a centered box) and P2 and P3 share the bottom in traditional boxes. Not so bad, but a little jarring. The frame-rate seems to take a hit (esp. with water effects) and there's just a lot crammed into the hud.

There is no XP progression after a split-screen race, instead you have just about everything unlocked from the start. You earn points during races but like the goggles, zey do nothing. (I dislike having to unlock things for use in multiplayer, but if they had instituted the system of unlocks from the Online MP into the split-screen it would have made that mode a lot more enjoyable, in my opinion.) The splitscreen feels heavy and chuggy. If couch versus is what you're after, Modnation on the PS3 is the best destination at the moment (much faster and more of a whoopin' and holler' good time).

The game changes completely though when you take it online for the 4-20 car races (my fave). When you get in "the zone" and chaos is taking place everywhere around you... I love it. Just finishing in the Top 10 can be such an exciting and rewarding feeling. Of course, it can also be frustrating, but there'll be another race starting up in about a minute, so I've never found it to be too much of a problem. At any rate, your chance for revenge comes quickly. And you'll have ample opportunities during those big races.

Also, the online multiplayer has a lot of little progress bars to work through, so you're almost always working toward the completion of some goal or other.

Add to that the way you can customize the loadout before a race with various earned perks and it can be a time sink real fast.

The graphics aren't the best, but it's a dry-eye game where blinking just seems to not happen so much. And some of the tracks showcase some real nice ideas, like the single-lap race down the side of a mountain.

At any rate, I'm enjoying the game and it's satisfying my need for gripping the controller tightly.

It's not perfect but it's exciting when you take it online.

Switchbreak wrote:

It's not much more than that already, seeing as how it launched at $40 on Steam.

Which is still a lot to ask for a game that as far as I can tell consists entirely of an intro video followed by a black screen.

The extra $20 for the console version is what makes the game go.

Seems every major PC release nowadays has some sort of catastrophe at launch, one of many reasons I stick to console gaming when possible. It's nice and simple 99% of the time.

Blind_Evil wrote:

My roommate actually brought home Wake from the Redbox a little while after I posted here, and I'm a little cooler on Alan Wake than I had originally thought. The controls feel squirrelly (There's an abundance of seemingly unused buttons and you put sprint and dodge on the same one?)

There's an alternative control scheme in the options menu, and IMO, is more sensible.

and the manuscript pages' tendency to spoil the action kinda bothers me.

Don't read them as you pick them up, they aren't in any way required for gameplay or to advance the story, they're just there to shed a little more light (ahem) on the story. I tend to wait till close to the end of the episode, then read the ones I've collected. That way, the story has happened, and nothing is spoiled.

What I did was buy Alan Wake for $49 from amazon, got a $10 g/c for it, and then just traded it back to them for $35, so effectively a $5 rental I agree with you though, it's an on-rails one-time-thru game (for me anyway), and is definitely rental worthy. It does give a solid 12 to 14 hours of gameplay though.

And for the record, I dumped the Split/Second demo after about 3 minutes. That driving feels really cruddy, and the powerplays are too often out of my range of vision.

Yeah, I didn't care for S/S at all.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

And for the record, I dumped the Split/Second demo after about 3 minutes. That driving feels really cruddy, and the powerplays are too often out of my range of vision.

Yeah, I didn't care for S/S at all.

I rented S/S and really happy with it. I liked that there were several game modes that kept the game fresh. I'd still call it a rental or a bargain bin game. It's not deep, although I would say about the same as Blur.

Personally, I preferred the S/S demo, although I enjoyed the heck out of each. I think that if S/S had been MP only, and Blur was a single player demo, more people would have found S/S to have the better demo. S/S is a really fun MP game, too.

I think both games are solid, fun, arcade racers. The driving in S/S seemed wonky as first, but has gotten progressively better as you get better vehicles. I loved the Blur demo, but am turned off a little by just how clearly it is just Mario Kart with a new skin. But I will rent Blur for a week and give it a whirl.

Then, in a month or two, I will find one of them for cheap.

Mister Magnus wrote:

Today's Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/5/28/ . :drink:

I agree with him about the game. I felt that Anthony's review at IGN was written fairly, but it really felt like the score reflected too much of his disappointment with the single player game.

This game is a bit of a drag in sp, but it's a completely beautiful mess in mp ... as long as you don't always expect to win.

garion333 wrote:
Mister Magnus wrote:

Today's Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/5/28/ . :drink:

I agree with him about the game. I felt that Anthony's review at IGN was written fairly, but it really felt like the score reflected too much of his disappointment with the single player game.

This game is a bit of a drag in sp, but it's a completely beautiful mess in mp ... as long as you don't always expect to win.

I've given up expecting to win in online mp games looooong ago. It makes it that much more satisfying/exciting when it happens.

Yeah, I probably should have said "expect to win ever". You can get set so far back in Blur pretty easily, so Tycho is correct, it becomes more about the pockets of people to destroy than winning the race.

Then again, winning races isn't always about being in first with the game, which is great.

Hey, turns out all I needed to do was grab nVidia's beta drivers and now the game works. It's a ton of fun, too.

The phenomenon of getting so far back that it's essentially impossible to catch back up is why the Blue Shell in MK was necessary. From a game design standpoint, having competitors using Stars and Red Shells and Green Shells and all sorts of shenanigans to slow each other down only serves to allow the leader to pull ahead that much more.

In order to equalize the playing field, you have to allow the race laggers to field really devastating weaponry against the race leaders, and specifically against the race leaders.

It may be annoying to be hit with multiple Blue Shells when you're in the lead, but that is the nature of a weapon-based racer - you get targeted with nukes when you're in front.

If getting too far behind is a problem at all, then it stands to reason that Blur may need a Blue Shell of its own.

The blue shell doesn't really solve anything, though. It only attacks the lead racer, unless there are others in the AoE. 1 may fall to 4, but how does that really help 12, who shot it?

Blur has a blue shell of its own, it's just not automatic.

Blind Evil:

Only very indirectly.

Blue Shells kill the momentum of the lead pack by targeting the lead player in a wide AoE. This means that it's always risky to chase down the lead player because you could be caught in the blast. Needless to say, it's also always risky to be in the lead.

So Blue Shells kill the desire to lead by killing the leads. Even if the players do not allow the Blue Shell to dictate the metagame, it still benefits every other player not in the lead by bombing the first 4 players.

Note that some of the other things you could get when you're that far behind - Bullet Bill and Star Power, are easy ways to easily chase down the leaders. It's just a matter of luck as to which one you'll end up netting, but that means that when you're that far behind, you always want to unleash a Blue Shell before you nab another power-up, because it doesn't allow you to win - it only allows you not to lose as badly.

It doesn't make sense from an individual player standpoint. It only makes sense when you watch the game from the outside and see how the powers interact - which is expected of players who are deeper into the strategy of winning MarioKart.

Blur has a lightning attack that targets whoever is in first place, or if there are a bunch of people up front it hits the whole pack.

LarryC wrote:

So Blue Shells kill the desire to lead by killing the leads. Even if the players do not allow the Blue Shell to dictate the metagame, it still benefits every other player not in the lead by bombing the first 4 players.

Note that some of the other things you could get when you're that far behind - Bullet Bill and Star Power, are easy ways to easily chase down the leaders. It's just a matter of luck as to which one you'll end up netting, but that means that when you're that far behind, you always want to unleash a Blue Shell before you nab another power-up, because it doesn't allow you to win - it only allows you not to lose as badly.

It doesn't make sense from an individual player standpoint. It only makes sense when you watch the game from the outside and see how the powers interact - which is expected of players who are deeper into the strategy of winning MarioKart.

As Switch implies, the shock attack hits the person in first. Everything you say of Mario Kart Wii applies to Blur except you choose you powerup. In MK, it's random, Blur's powerups stay static. So, to defeat the AI in SP mode you have to expoit the track you're on. MK, regardless of the version, expects this premise. It has offered nothing new outside of preferred courses for two generations.

Ah! So Blur does have a Blue Shell! I had been receiving reports that it did not. That's good to know.

Switchbreak wrote:

Blur has a lightning attack that targets whoever is in first place, or if there are a bunch of people up front it hits the whole pack.

The Shock's not a guaranteed hit in the same way that a Blue Shell is, though. In fact, it's much more of a trap placement, which places three energy fields on the track, which a careful driver can work around. And, actually, other players that aren't in first can get snagged by a Shock field as well, which actually makes it a more suitable weapon for somebody in the middle of the pack, who needs multiple cars upfront to slow down to have any kind of shot.

Though, really, I think the bigger triumph in the skill-over-luck weapon approach is Blur's decision to toss out random weapon distribution altogether and work off of specific weapon placements on the tracks. One of the bigger problems with the Blue Shell, especially in Mario Kart Wii, is that the distribution was an absolute disaster, making the odds very likely that you'd take the lead and get hit by at least one, if not two consecutively. And, of course, there were always those moments where you'd end up with the Wrong Weapon, like a Banana Peel when you really needed a Red Shell.

You still have a bit of an element of luck -- maybe there's somebody next to you that manages to grab it right before you, maybe you drift a bit more than you expected and you end up missing it -- but the weapon placements allow you to build expectations about certain segments of the tracks and strategize around them.