Sadly, a sequel was in the early stages of development at Black Rock but was canned after Disney Interactive Studios consolidated the studio down, before then closing it for good in July 2011. Instead it opted for an original soundtrack – again in keeping with the action film vibes – which admittedly did make a lot of sense, but still felt like a misstep for me. Pure had a brilliant mix of rock and drum and bass – featuring Pendulum and The Qemists that fused both genres together – but Split/Second didn’t offer any licenced music. One area that did really let me down was the soundtrack. Despite only having 15 tracks at launch – DLC did appear down the line – there was a lot of replayability in them in the same way that you never tire of watching your favourite action films. I have never been a massive fan of open-world driving games, so where Burnout Paradise was a big disappointment for me, Split/Second looked to fill that void. I appreciated something a bit different, as well as providing rewards to more than just the first position.Īfter the brilliant off-road racer Pure in 2008, my hopes were high for what came next from Black Rock Studios, and Split/Second was definitely up my street having spent most of my adolescence on Burnout 3. Form is reduced or increased based on your performance in the previous race if you were in an eight-player race and finished in the top four, your online form would decrease, whereas if you finished 5 th or worse, it would increase. When first starting online, you have an online form of 99, and the intention is to reduce this to single digits. Of course, online multiplayer was included but it had a very bizarre ranking system that to this day I have not ever seen since. So, the helicopter in the sky could be seen and triggered because there was no unnecessary clutter on the HUD. This helped massively, because as you learnt the track layouts you also needed to take into account where you could trigger destructive elements, and these pinged on the screen when they first became available. It would only display lap number, overall position and the Power Play meter even things like a speedometer were considered surplus to requirement. Rather than opting for crowding the HUD with different elements – and in turn detracting from the action on-screen – all the information you needed was displayed on the back of the car like a little hologram on the bumper. The presentation was also something given a lot of attention. But whilst you were earning all this juice for your meters to perform the Power Plays, so were your opponents… Smaller ones would only require a small chunk to perform – and could be done more than once – while the larger ones would require more effort and could only be done just the once. And it was far more tactical than the previous description gives it credit for Power Plays could only be performed when you had built up your meter far enough by performing jumps, drafting, drifting and other manoeuvres. ![]() ![]() Split/Second delivered a mix of arcade racing and destruction that was undoubtedly in the same vein as the Burnout games, but was also original enough that it could stand on its own. So, you had to drive fast, dodge missiles, survive and score points if all that sounds like exhilarating fun then trust me, it definitely was. You couldn’t just drive slowly though and expect to score points, as Split/Second was wise to that and would pop up telling you that you were “TOO SLOW”, not awarding anything for surviving that missile barrage. You were also awarded points for doing so. Again, it was just you on the track, but you were against an attack helicopter that would launch missiles that you repeatedly had to dodge. Perhaps my favourite – and most difficult – were the Air Strike events.
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