"I took 'shock' instead of 'last stand'"

I was fortunate enough to win a beta key to Blur, Bizarre Creations’ next racer. You may know them from Dreamcast’s Metropolis Street Racer, or the Project Gotham series. If you’re a fan of what they accomplished in the realistic racing genre, you may not be of Blur. However, if you’re a fan of Mario Kart, Burnout, or Modern Warfare 2 (what?!), you’ll find a lot to love here.

Yep, Bizarre is competing with Treyarch for “Game That Rips The Most Off from Infinity Ward” this year. And it’s shaping up to make for one of the best racers to come along in years. Hit the jump for the deets!

Blur is like Mario Kart on steroids. Gone are the cartoony graphics, replaced with photoreal images that have been tweaked over the top with insane effects. The effect come up on the powerups: missles, mines, shields, and the like. The game is smooth as butter, and after a few laps around the tracks, you’ll come to know what powerups are best used when. You can hold up to three at a time, which lends a nice “hold or use now” strategy to the game. And if Blur stopped at a photo-real Kart racer, it might be enough to be interesting. But it goes beyond that.

Where Blur rips off the Infinity Ward games is in the progression. Yes, racing gets you XP (er, fans!) that help you to level up. Levelling up gets you new cars, game modes and perks (er, mods!). The mods let you tweak your abilities (start each game with a powerup, earn more xp, shields heal your car, etc) which makes for a MW-like mod customization for each race. There’s also challenges for winning races, getting kills with the power-ups and the like. Between rounds, lobbygoers get to vote on the next track to be raced. Sure, these ideas aren’t necessarily original, but in applying it to the racing genre, Bizarre has added an addictive customization and carrot-on-a-stick in a genre that typically doesn’t have a compelling progression.

The racing is silky smooth and addictive

How’s the racing? Fantastic and silky-smooth. The tracks in the beta are varied, with multiple paths and shortcuts a-la-Burnout. In a few hours with the beta, I didn’t notice any slowdown or networking issues. This is a good thing since Blur is due out at the end of May.

Blur may not have been on your watch list, but make no mistake: This is shaping up to be the best multiplayer “fun” (as opposed to “realistic”) racing game to come around in years. Hopefully the beta will be made public, and more people can get a hold of Blur and make their own minds up. But me? I’m putting my $60 aside for this one now. I’m sold.

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