Monthly Archives: June 2010

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Blur

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Bizarre Creations’ Blur is one of those games so simple in its premise you wonder why it hasn’t been done sooner. It’s best described as Project Gotham Racer meets Mario Cart, and takes the best things of all those games and shoves it in one neat little package.

Like Project Gotham Racing, Blur has “real world” locations such as San Francisco, Tokyo, and Barcelona, with fake tracks in each of those cities. The cities look vibrant and real, full of neon lights and flowing banners and glass towers and trees and dirt on the off-road tracks. Also similar to PGR, it has fantastic looking licensed cars from Ferrari, Lotus, Ford, Volkswagon, Landrover and more. As you zoom about the race tracks, you take damage from other racers and crashing into walls and such, and the more you get hit and smashed, the more damaged your car looks. But that’s where the realism stops and the fun starts.

The object of single player is nothing new to racing game enthusiasts. Race to win and collect “lights” for first, second and third place. The more lights you have, the more events you unlock in each division. Each division is owned by a particular racer with a particular car and mod, but more on that in a moment.

There are also bonus lights to pick up via two means – Fan Runs and Fan Targets. Driving through a gate icon found on every track opens up the Fan Runs where you must race through slalom style to get more fans. Fans are otherwise rewarded for clever driving and using pickups on other racers. Fan Targets are how many fans you must win to unlock a light. Fans are the currency of Blur, and by winning fans you unlock different cars and mods. It’s similar to Kudos found in PGR. As you do certain manoeuvres, you’re rewarded points. However, unlike PGR there is more to it than simply slick driving.

Like Mario Cart, there are pickups on the track at various locations. These come in the form of offensive and defensive, and cause all kinds of mayhem when racing about. The offensive pickups come in the form of mine, barge, shunt, bolt, and shock. Mines can be shot forward or backwards, and remain on the track until someone hits them with their car or another weapon. Barge pushes the cars around you away from you. Shunt is a homing beacon, which whirls into the car targeted in front of you, ala the red shell in Mario Cart. Bolt is like the green shell, a “dumb” forward or reverse firing missile which is devastating if you manage to get 3 hits in a row with it. Shock shoots columns of lightning into the front runners path, causing mass destruction. Defence involves shield, repair and nitro. Shield protects your car from other effects. Repair repairs damage, and nitro boosts you at speed.

However, to view the pickups so simplistically won’t win you many fans. All pickups can be used offensively or defensively in the right situation. Use shield and nitro to ram into other cars. Fire nitro forward to “air break”, allowing you to avoid collisions and then speed out of danger. Deploy mines, barge and bolts to destroy shunts and mines. Your score will rise even higher due to the fan multiplier when you’re driving well and use the pickups in combination, such as drifting around corners and bolting cars. There are also Fan Favourites, which give you a time limit to perform a certain manoeuvre such as nitro slam another car, or drift well around a corner.

There are nine different divisions in single player, and to be eligible to race the owner of the division in a One on One Race to own their car, you have to do more than just race. For example, in the Fan Favourite division you must complete 5 Fan Demands, Complete 2 Fan Runs, Complete 4 Fan Targets and Win Event 5 with one x5 Fan Combo. Once you defeat them, you unlock their car and their mod. Mods do a range of things, such as increase the number of bolts you can fire, and armour plating.

There are 3 varieties of races other than One on One – Checkpoint, Race, and Destruction. Checkpoint is a timed race, with stopwatch and nitro pickups only. Race is a regular blur race against 10 or 20 other cars, whilst Destruction arms you with bolts only and places cars in front of you to destroy. Each car destroyed add more time to your race. Whilst on paper this seems like not a lot of variety, the fast paced nature of the game means you never get bored.

Single player, whist quite difficult and a little shallow compared to other racing games, is still loads of fun. Bizarre Creations have recognised this to some extent, and allowed the creation of challenges between friends. Just amassed an enormous amount of fans? Set up a Nemesis on the leaderboard and challenge your friends to beat you. Got all the lights on expert? Send a message to facebook or twitter to brag about it. It seems worthless at first, but seeing your friends beat your hard work with what appears to be ease spurs even the least competitive person to try the race again, and this simple yet effective method of creating depth has worked.

But even so, racing multiplayer is where the game truly shines. Four player split screen will fill a room with the same laughter and entertainment as Mario Cart once did, and even the best driver can be taken down by a well placed mine right on the finishing line, meaning it’s accessible to everyone.

In Online Multiplayer there are different race modes, including racing with no mods which is rather boring to be honest; Team Racing which makes the game feel like Midtown Madness but with power ups; to a smash up derby arena fight which is quite possibly the best thing since Destruction Derby on the original Playstation. Furthermore, Fans and Mods are slightly different. Taking a leaf out of Modern Warfare’s book, Fans act as experience points and Mods act as outfits. As per single player fans unlock cars and events as you go up fan levels, but you’re only racing for fans, not lights.

Mods are different from single player as there are more of them and they have more effects, such as converting shield hits to power ups, and causing mines to explode into 4 mini mines, and defensive stuff like make your car harder to home in on. You can assign 3 mods to a car, and you have 4 mod groups to customise and apply to your car, so like the weapon kits in MW you can find the mods which suit your play style best.

There are also car and rank challenges, again which improve your car and are rewarded by playing the game online. This adds enormous depth to the multiplayer game, especially in team games where users will complement each other with some equipping their cars to win the race, and others equipping to take battle to the other team.

Conclusion:
The fun of Blur is unparalleled in any other driving game. It could have been simply Mario Cart in real looking cars, but Bizarre Creations have looked hard at what is fun about racing games, what is fun about competitive play, what is fun about online gaming, and worked out how to get all of that in one game and more importantly, get it to work well and remain fun.

Pros:
Looks awesome
Simple yet fantastic take on a motor racing game
Incredibly fun to play split screen
Quite some depth to the multiplayer
Cool use of social networking tools

Cons:
Single player is quite difficult
Can’t race split screen online

90/100

Event, inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

London Electricity @ Prince of Wales

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13/06/2010

I just got to get this out of the way first – my review is in no way a reflection of how the majority of punters obviously felt about London Electricity. London Electricity had everyone dancing and singing and cheering and waving their hands in the air. For those people, it could have been the greatest set they’ve ever seen, and if they were writing this review it could be very different. I honestly wish I felt the same way they might, but I don’t.

Because after seeing Klute last week, I thought London Electricity was predictable and average. The girly vocals and hiphop samples and cheesy basslines simply weren’t doing anything for me. I danced for a little bit, but never “went off” like I did at Klute. Although I haven’t heard that exact set before track for track, it is essentially pretty much the same every time he plays. It was simply all the big tunes London Electricity has released or remixed in the last two years, with some older stuff like a High Contrast remix thrown in for good measure.

I didn’t think very much of MC AD either. I mean, does every UK MC have to pit the Aussie states against one another? I know a few people who went to the Queensland show, and they felt pretty much the same as I did about the London Electricity set, so I find it difficult to believe the crowd was louder than Melbourne. I liked the nod to the Socceroos, although I was confused when London Electricity himself jumped on the mic to apologise for stuffing up. It was by no means a Groove Rider sized train wreck and I doubt 90% of the crowd there would have even noticed if he didn’t point it out.

I actually enjoyed Patch’s set more, and although the crowd had thinned by the time he came on, it just sounded better. Better selection, better mixing, better to dance to. And although I’ve had mixed feelings about MC Lowqui in the past, he really gelled with Patch. He did what an MC should – compliment the music. And Patch played True Romance, one of my favourite tunes ever.

I said in my review of Klute I expect the unexpected in dnb, but I was unexpectedly disappointed by London Electricity. Sometimes when I look at my reviews I seem a little too critical, and it may be the case here, but I do my upmost to be honest in my reviews, and honestly this is the first time in a long time I’ve been dissatisfied by an international’s dnb set.

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Gift of Gab – Escape 2 Mars

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I’ve been sitting on this review of Gift Of Gab’s solo effort Escape To Mars for a while, much to itm’s chagrin. I’ve been umming and ahing about what to write about this release for over a month. I’ve listened to it many times, and I’m still completely at a loss to explain how I feel.

On the one hand this is a great album. It’s well produced, and Gift of Gab is an amazingly gifted rapper, with a flow like no other MC and a passion for writing thought provoking lyrics. He’s been consistently brilliant both one record and in live performances. From the earliest tracks on Solesides to guest starring on rock albums, he’s always delivered incredibly well.

But to be honest, my problem with this is that’s to be expected, and I was looking for something beyond what I’ve come to expect. I’m not going to make any ridiculous claims like he’s lost his touch or phoned this in or reached his peak, because he hasn’t. I simply had high hopes for this outing, and it simply didn’t help me reach them. For someone new to Gab’s style, they’re going to love it, but for a fan of his for a long while, I suspect they may feel it’s treading too familiar ground.

There’s nothing here which challenged me to think differently of Gift of Gab. Even with Del and Brother Ali, two of my favourite hiphop MCs of all time, joining Gab on Dreamin’, there’s no big “wow” factor to any of the songs. They’re all cool jams, but nothing leaps out and grabs me like Alphabet Aerobics or Make You Feel That Way did.

And the reason I’ve been so reluctant to complete this review is because I don’t want anyone to read my opinion and not buy the album. There is a heap of praise from numerous places plastered on the cover and the press release, and I don’t disagree with any of it. It’s simply one of those albums you have to listen to in order to make up your own minds.

inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Klute @ Roxanne’s Parlour

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05/07/2010

I just realised I’m probably the worst person to review dnb gigs in Melbourne. Back in the day, I used to know all the big tunes, and could muddle my way through a review of a set with no worries. These days however, things have changed. But unlike before, I’m enjoying reviewing these events more, simply because I’ve come to expect the unexpected.

Before Klute came on, Joe Seven was playing some glitchy minimalist dubby drum and bass, stuff which intrigued me as it straddled that line between breaks, dubstep and drum and bass. It was an interesting selection for a set before Klute, whose style is widely regarded as pure drum and bass, and although I didn’t jump around like a mad bastard to Joe’s set, I did really enjoy the sounds he was putting out. One tune in particular stuck with me – it sounded as though it sampled Future Sound of London’s Papua New Guinea.

By the time Klute had started Roxanne’s had a sizable amount of crew ready to bounce, and bounce they did. Kicking off with a melodic track, the deep deep bassline kicked in and got everyone a little more vocal. Following on with growly basslines and then a rolling almost old school track, then bang into hard dnb. Although I don’t have Klute’s new album, many of these tunes sounded distinctively Klute, and the crowd reaction was also distinctively Klute – lots of cheering and lots of people dancing like mad bastards.

I tried to check out the “red” room too, but there were very little people in there, and every time I did I could hear the slammers Klute was playing, so never lingered for long. Klute continued on, lifting the crowd with the melodic amen breaks than slamming down the hard tunes, keeping the crowd pumped throughout. It was a reminder of just why Klute is one of my favourite dnb DJs – he’s not technically brilliant with tricks and showmanship, but delivers a solid dancefloor set that rocks the party every single time.