The Digest: Near perfection of the destructive racing genre, Split/Second is something every racing fan should pick up in a heartbeat, as well as anyone that generally likes explosions. Stiff turning  in every vehicle, along with some few minor flaws, may turn some players away. Looks like Criterion’s Burnout franchise finally has some competition.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: May 18, 2010
PUBLISHER: Disney Interactive Studios
DEVELOPER: Black Rock Studios
ESRB RATING: “E10+” for Ages 10 and  Up
GENRE: Racing Action

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:

Become a part of the most watched reality TV show in existence, Split/Second! Contestants will take part in the most dangerous racing ever, dodging not just the competition, but falling towers, boats, planes, bridges, explosive barrel wielding helicopters, semis, and more in order to proclaim themselves as the Season Champion! Think you have what it takes to compete?

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Fully Loaded Single Player Campaign
• Destructible Environments
• 8 Player Online Multiplayer
• 2 Player Split Screen

Screaming down the street, you pass up the competition, securing your top position, along with first place. Nothing can stop you from achieving victory.

…then a passenger airliner comes out of nowhere and completely demolishes your chances at stardom. This is how most games in Split/Second, Black Rock Studio’s newest racing game, end up playing out, and damn, is it awesome.

The story line is perfect for this type of game. A reality TV legend, Split/Second is one of the most watch shows in the world. Hell, I’d probably watch it myself! After showing that you do, indeed, deserve to be on the tracks (by completing a short tutorial), you’re immediately thrown into the first episode of the series, with the Season Champion Title in your sights.

The gameplay itself is some of the most exhilarating, destructive racing you’ll ever be in, giving the Burnout series a run for it’s money. While Burnout focuses on direct combat with the other racers, Split/Second brings something new to the destructive racing table: nothing but environmental attacks.

You have no boost. You have no guns.

But you have a fully loaded cruise ship to drive into the other drivers, along with things such as helicopters dropping explosive barrels, cranes, and parked cars and buses that are just waiting for someone to come by to kamikaze any driver nearby.

Your Heads Up Display is minimal, and is perfectly placed directly behind your vehicle. While it may seem a bit distracting at first, the placement is extremely helpful, letting you check anything you need to without moving your eyes off the road. Most of the HUD is taken over by a three section curved meter. You can fill up each section to activate things around the environment to activate objects around the track set up to eliminate others. Fill up the meter completely, and you can activate huge attacks, such as falling towers, and the iconic passenger airliner.

The game goes all-out on the presentation, with beautiful menus and a soundtrack deserving of being used in the most intense action movie car chase scenes. The game even has cut scenes showing a preview of the next episode, complete with an overly dramatic narrator, with a voice guaranteed to give you chills down your spine. There’s even two faint logos, Split/Second logo and a logo of the fictional TV channel, BRTV, which I’m assuming means Black Rock Television, that airs Split/Second to the masses, that appear once every short while in the top right corner. They don’t give you any advantages in game, but they do help with the whole “TV show” immersion.

The Single Player campaign is simple enough for anyone to get into quickly. Instead of racing in a designated order, one by one, you compete in what are called “Episodes.” Each episode contains a batch of six predetermined events you can compete in to complete said episode, but two events are locked at the beginning or an episode. Depending on what place you earn in each event, you’ll earn a certain amount of credits, up to fifty. Earn enough credits, and you’ll unlock the sixth, not the fifth, event. You can unlock the fifth event by making enough opponents wreck within that episode’s selection of races.

There’s a healthy amount of gametypes to play. There’s the standard appearances, like Race, which I can assume you know what happens in that one. Detonator mode is Split/Second’s version of Time Trial mode. The only difference here is that a good amount of the environment attacks get activated on their own, doing their best to slow you down. The Elite Races, however, which take over the sixth spot of an episode, have you competing in a standard race with Split/Second’s most notorious racers, who are so intimidating, so mind numbingly frightening… that their names appear over their heads!

Frightening, indeed.

There’s also gametypes unique to the Split/Second universe, such as Air Strike and Survival. Air Strike has you racing for your life as a Split/Second branded Apache helicopter has it’s missiles aimed directly for your head (or… car hood…?). Your goal is to survive as many waves of missiles as you can before you finally are taken out by the helimahcoppy. As you’d expect, missile waves get bigger and bigger as you survive more and more. Each wave you survive adds points to your overall score. Pass enough waves, and your score multiplier will increase. Survival has you trying to pass as many semis as possible, but there’s a catch: the eighteen wheelers will drop explosive barrels as you pass by them. Who doesn’t love explosive barrels? Pass enough of the semis, and your score multiplier will increase. Both gametypes will end once you crash three times. If you’re playing either of these in Season mode (the game’s campaign/story mode), the game will immediately end when you pass the bot who has the highest score in the bot leaderboard. The bot’s scores are predetermined, and you’re the only person on the track at the time you’re competing. (There are bots on the track in Survival, but their only purpose is to live as kamikaze distraction for you.) Being cut off after passing the first bot’s score is a bit of a letdown if you’re already in the midst of the action. If you want to go as long as you can, you’ll have to go to the Quickplay option instead.

The online component doesn’t have as many options as single player Quickplay, sadly. While single player has six gametypes to choose from, online gameplay only allows half of the gametypes to be played. While it’s understandable for some of them (such as Detonator), since Time Trials are designed to be a single player affair, I really wish things like Air Strike would be playable on Xbox Live. The only real exclusive gametype to the online component is a variation of Survival. Instead of one player at a time, up to eight others survive as long as they can against the eighteen wheelers. This can be ridiculously fun, and will be some of the most intense racing you’ll have in the game, but if you’ve got one person who completely dominates the track, all the semis will drop barrels based on that one player’s skill, meaning constant barrel spam for anyone that isn’t as good as the dominating opponent. I couldn’t move ten feet without dying by a barrel, while the person in first just kept on speeding past the competition without a worry. The excitement of exploding every three seconds wears off considerably when it’s all you’re doing.

As you start unlocking more Achievements based on things you do in the game, you’ll receive a little decal for your car, which has the same picture as the achievement you just unlocked. If you don’t like one… too bad. These decals have to stay on the car from then on. You can’t even move them to your preference. Did you get one that looks ugly, or doesn’t match with your favorite car? Suck it up.

Car control itself is a bit too heavy feeling. You turn slowly, for being such a light vehicle. This causes the side walls to be your best friend in some of the more sharp turns on the tracks. If you can control your speed well enough, this is just a minor issue. If you’re bad at doing things like that, like myself, you’ll be stuck on the walls for most of your racing. A car should feel like a car. Not a tank.

Conclusion:

Even with all the small flaws, and the stiff car maneuvering, Split/Second is a fantastic choice for anyone that likes racing games. Burnout fans that have been needing a fix for a while should pick this up as soon as possible, since DLC support for Burnout Paradise has finally been cut off. It may be the only chance you get some destructive racing back into your system for a long time. If this was a TV show, like it is in the game, I would watch it regularly. That’s saying something, considering I don’t watch TV.

Single Player: 8/10 | Multi-Player: 7/10

Special thanks to Disney for providing us with a copy of the game for review.