Slick’s Nit-Picks: Split/Second

I had a funny feel­ing about this game when it was first announced. It looked like some­thing that could be fan­tas­tic; it also looked a hell of a lot like a cheap Burnout clone. I said that I would reserve judg­ment. The demo came out and I played it sev­eral times. I per­son­ally love dri­ving games but even I admit that they can be a bit tedious and repet­i­tive. Games like Burnout par­adise have done every­thing they can to keep that tedium to a min­i­mum. This demo did not. The sav­ing grace there was that it was a demo and as we all know a demo may not rep­re­sent the fin­ished prod­uct. Finally I got to play the game and I am going to be hon­est: Split/Second is a real mixed bag. You have some absolutely fan­tas­tic race moments and then you have some unbal­anced game­play and graph­i­cal prob­lems that make you want to scream. Even with this review, I say try it and judge for yourself.

STORY

Yes, I have a story sec­tion for a dri­ving game. Split/Second seems to be the cre­ation of some­one who decided to Play Burnout Revenge while watch­ing the movie Death Race and drop­ping acid all at the same time. Appar­ently some­body with insane amounts of money decided to make this real­ity show called (sur­prise) Split/Second. An entire city was cre­ated for the show. Nobody lives in it and nobody would want to. You’d be safer in the Cal­i­for­nia limo scene of 2012 than any­where in this city. So your char­ac­ter has passed the audi­tions to be the newest dri­ver on this show and your goal is to climb the ranks to the top this sea­son, episode by episode. Each episode of Split/Second has events: usu­ally two reg­u­lar races, a test run of a new vehi­cle against the clock, Elim­i­na­tion races (which blow up the losers), an elite race against what I like to call “the rub­ber band crew” and spe­cial events. Oh these events are spe­cial alright. One is called Sur­vival. Imag­ine you are rac­ing at top speed down a track while Opti­mus Prime is throw­ing explo­sive bar­rels at you from the back of his trailer – that  is pretty much Sur­vival. There’s Air Strike, where you race on a track while a mil­i­tary chop­per tar­gets you with sidewinder mis­siles. And if you get tired of that, there is Air Revenge where you can mess up said chopper’s tar­get­ing sys­tem to make the mis­siles blowup the chop­per. Are we high enough yet? If not, well then read on. in any of the events that involve other named dri­vers, you have power plays. Power plays are events trig­gered by the dri­vers that are designed to essen­tially kill your oppo­nents. It says that you “wrecked so-and-so” on the screen but those are just kind words like the way Poké­mon “faint” at the end of bat­tles. The game is devoid of any rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a dri­ver in the vehi­cles and that’s the only way it got an E rat­ing. The con­cept is ridicu­lous, but I will for­give a bit because it makes for gen­er­ally good rac­ing. SCORE: 7/10

GRAPHICS/CAMERA

The artists deserve seri­ous credit for this game because the car designs and the back­grounds are just beau­ti­ful. It’s a shame that pol­ish doesn’t always hold up dur­ing game­play. Tech­ni­cal issues abound in this game from clip­ping to weird hit detec­tion to cars rolling over or going through each other. No mat­ter how you or the other dri­vers crash, there is only one model for a destroyed car and it always looks the same. There were moments where I won­dered if I was really play­ing a 2010 release. This game was clearly shoot­ing for Burnout Paradise’s title as top arcade racer but it is tech­ni­cally infe­rior to Burnout Revenge, orig­i­nally a last-gen title. For the most part the cam­era works but there are key moments where it just seems to hate you. If you pass right under some­thing the cam­era can get stuck on that object which can really mess you up. The light­ing occa­sion­ally pro­vides for some annoy­ance as there are areas where you can­not tell whether what is in front of you is an obsta­cle or open road and that usu­ally equals a crash. For the most part things go very smoothly but when there’s a hitch it turns into a tear your hair out and toss your con­troller moment more than once in the game. If there is a sequel this must be addressed.. Being able to toss a super dump truck at your oppo­nents is awe­some; hav­ing no idea where to safely pass said vehi­cle so it doesn’t smear you across the track is not. SCORE: 8/10

MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS/VOICE ACTING

Sadly, this is the one part of the game that seems phoned in. The car sounds are there and they are more than decent, but noth­ing is remark­able. It is very con­ve­nient that the sur­round effects let you know in advance if some­one is about to pass you because that will hap­pen very often. Even the big explo­sions are lack­lus­ter because they are often fol­lowed by the slow­down sound effect when a power play wrecks your oppo­nents. The music is all instru­men­tal and all for­get­table. It will start to annoy you if you are a com­pletist and try for gold on all events because the Det­o­na­tor  events require you to be near per­fect. The announcer is prob­a­bly the best thing you will hear in the game and you only hear him at the start and end of each episode. This game is not going to be one of your “glad I got that sur­round sound sys­tem” moments. SCORE: 5/10

GAMEPLAY

Split/Second gives the player a won­der­ful sense of speed but you always feel like you need more. I half under­stand why this direc­tion was cho­sen but it was taken a bit too far. In a race, it does not mat­ter how well you per­form or how far ahead of your oppo­nent you are, you are going to hear that sound of some­one com­ing up from behind that is about to pass you. That can be really annoy­ing because you have almost no way to attack when you are the leader. The one offense you have in that posi­tion would be to acti­vate a short­cut and have it crash down on the fol­low­ers but just like the cops, that is never around when you need it. Drift­ing is a huge part of this game as it is one of your main ways to power up your power play abil­ity yet unlike most games where it is a way to main­tain or even increase your speed on a turn, it slows you down. The accel­er­a­tion in many of the cars is ter­ri­ble and the ones that have really good accel­er­a­tion are not ter­ri­bly fast. Every­thing in the game is set to leave you in last place and it is up to you to fight your way to the front. That would be all well and good if not for the hor­ri­ble rub­ber band­ing in the game. I have had races where I am four to six sec­onds ahead and sud­denly two cars or more pass me while i am at top speed. Of course that does not work the other way around. If you are in sec­ond place and the screen says you are six sec­onds away from first, unless you can acti­vate a short­cut that the leader misses, you will never get the gold in that race. No mat­ter how much pun­ish­ment you inflict on the AI cars, they are right there behind you. Check the videos of me play­ing the game for a bet­ter idea of what I mean. The first is me just get­ting trashed repeat­edly and it dis­plays the glitches i men­tioned. The sewer race I showed has me lit­er­ally destroy­ing the com­pe­ti­tion and I just barely get first. You have to play online just to get any kind of sense of bal­ance. The game is not dif­fi­cult because it is chal­leng­ing or requires any spe­cial degree of skill; it is dif­fi­cult because it is sim­ply unfair due to bal­ance issues. SCORE: 7/10

REPLAY VALUE/TROPHY & ACHIEVEMENT HUNTING

For­tu­nately with a rac­ing game, you can squeeze replay value out of it as long as there are peo­ple to play with. This one should have an active com­mu­nity for a good while because the out­ra­geous power plays will attract peo­ple to it. The achievements/trophies are all attain­able and it is only the Det­o­na­tor related ones and the 100% com­ple­tion that will give you some headache. Every­thing else is either trial and error or patience as you rack up the nec­es­sary num­bers. Any­one that plays through the entire sea­son and plays online should be able to accom­plish every­thing and just doing that will add plenty of replay to the game. SCORE: 9/10

OVERALL

Split/Second had the poten­tial to really give Burnout Par­adise a run for its money. In truth it is too lin­ear to ever have knocked BP from its top spot. The game reminds me a lot of Burnout Revenge because of the way there are not that many locales but they inter­link to form dif­fer­ent tracks. The power play sys­tem, while ridicu­lous, was a bril­liant idea for adding action and uncer­tainty to the game. When you are lead­ing the pack you’ll drive through cer­tain areas pray­ing that noth­ing blows up in your face. I would love to see a sequel to this game that fixes the prob­lems of this one. If they went the Burnout Par­adise route and made an open city and have it laden with all kinds of sur­prises that could make for an incred­i­ble game. Hope­fully Dis­ney Inter­ac­tive can pull it off. OVERALL SCORE 7.2/10

Handel

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