At PAX Disney Interactive provided gamers with the opportunity to play through a 360 demo of Split/Second. Lasting fifteen minutes or so my time was brief - but when there's a line of eager gamers behind you it's best to hit it and quit it. An arcade racer sharing plenty of commonality with Burnout, the daredevil Split/Second should still manage to carve out a niche for itself in 2010.
The gameplay I experienced at PAX won't be new to those paying attention to trailers and demos of the game from E3 earlier this year. It included the same triggered events with a tower that comes crashing down sending a satellite dish spinning and altering the track, a cargo plane making an emergency landing against the flow of traffic and even an explosive drop from a helicopter. As a stunt driver in a madman with a blank check's dream scape, you get to race through all the wreckage, fuselage and even overtake a car or two in the battle for a first place finish. May no TNT may be left undetonated! In addition to the larger events (like building collapse) you can trigger smaller explosions to take out opponents, or even open and close short cuts to bypass the competition.
Every course has its own rigged explosives with you holding the big red button. The source of power behind all this is a meter that you fill by drifting, drafting, passing and generally outperforming. Divided into the thirds, as the meter fills you are able to trigger certain explosions with the most drastic and satisfying achieved with a completely full and glowing gauge. Triggering the random, smaller, events is achieved with a tap of A while hitting B at the appropriate time (there's are blue and red auras accompanying onscreen prompts) sets larger events in motion or even opens up shortcuts. The bigger events are more obviously scripted, which makes sense since their effects on the track are pretty drastic and fixed. Random explosions to take out individual vehicles add more tangible excitement and thrill.
Almost by nature, the game has to be easy enough to control that you can be watching the track and appreciating a massive plane crash, then navigate successfully through the fuselage. There is a lot of attention paid to making the course intuitive, a concern I had as a casual observer of the track-altering explosions. In the midst of the race, however, there is a single-mindedness to your progress that makes the intended course clear. I understand Black Rock is altering the handling of the cars so that they don't quite drive themselves, but in it current state with all those explosive set pieces at your disposal, how could you not win a race? The other drivers are armed with the same explosives, but I didn't see much of that going on in the race I played, so I walked away feeling a bit of a cheat.
Split/Second feels like an breezy game and helping in the ease of gameplay is how little screen space is consumed by the pyrotechnic meters. All that's displayed is the lap count, your standing and the meter. They're downright diminutive, leaving plenty of screen space for the race. There isn't a map, but that hardly matters as your route is very clearly delineated, even when going under a plane. There is a sense of unpredictability as cars react to changes to the environment, yet it was remarkably easy to stay on course and power through the madness.
From flipping buses to skidding satellite dishes, the game is a good looking arcade racer packing some graphical punch with on track effects from the events - like sparks and the road getting positively torn apart. It's all very Hollywood - how often are you realistically encountering an airplane hangar in a race? Damage modeling was noticeably spare in the demo, with more attention given to the different ways a course can be altered by the explosives and a definite sense of speed. What I couldn't get away from, particularly as there was such ease of control, was the desire to simply drive a clean line and overtake my opponents. I had a tendency to forget about blowing up the competition, and even about drifting. Drifting effectively helps fill your boost meter, but the drift itself is as scaled back control-wise as the driving itself might indicate. It's not a precise, simulated drift so much as a pleasant gameplay element.
In its current state Split/Second is not unlike a marriage of Burnout with Mario Kart - good-looking, explosive, straightforward gameplay that indulges all our childish desires. Simply, what you think of Split/Second will entirely depend on what you want out of a game with cars. If explosions and ease of control top your list, I think you have a lot to look forward to in Split/Second. If, however, nuanced gameplay, precision drifting and a driving sim are what matters in life, this experience is likely not the racer for you. Look for Split/Second next year; it's currently scheduled for a first quarter 2010 release on PS3, PC and 360.
