We’re the only site in the world to have played the latest build. We’d just like to pop that one in for a spot of inter-journalist arse-slapping before we get down to the preview. No one else has played this build. No one.

We love the chunky fuel-chuggers of Split/Second (cars, to the layperson).

For all its worth as an interesting experiment in combining arcade racing with open world design, Burnout Paradise’s (didn’t Blackrock ask us not to mention Burnout? Oh well… – Ed.) diversion from the linear formula that had served the series so well (both Burnout 2: Point of Impact and the third iteration, Takedown, especially) wasn’t a total success. Accomplished, yes, but lacking clarity and focus for the spectacular vehicular carnage: the ability to choose your own route to the finish line was novel but unwieldy, yet the concept had some merit. Taking this idea of user-created routes and refining it before marrying it to intense arcade action, Black Rock Studio has created a game that not only echoes Criterion’s former glories, but also threatens to outstrip them entirely.

Adopting the unusual stance of setting the action within a ‘reality TV’ concept wherein the racers are careering around a city at the behest of salivating audiences, Split/Second’s events (Black Rock is keen to stress they are more than just ‘races’) form the backbone of a season mode crafted to keep players enthralled in the constant action. As such, after the initial menus there will be no backing out to other menus during the course of play as users segue between different event types: Black Rock’s ambition is to keep the action flowing, never allowing the RPM (or, more likely, the BPM) to falter for a second.

To accomplish this, the in-game racing will have to be unremittingly engaging, and from our hands-on time with the game it is accomplishing this goal with extraordinary panache. Inspired by the pyrotechnic extravagance of noted influence Jerry Bruckheimer (and co-conspirator Michael Bay’s) movies, the core tenet of Split/Second is ‘Hollywood Action’. As such the levels themselves play out in locales ripped straight from the movies, with deserts, storm drains, powerplants and docksides featuring heavily in an interlinked, yet contextual fashion: courses may overlap in segments, but players will never be able to freewheel at their leisure. While the influences may be obvious, it is the user (or AI) dictated interaction with this scenery, and the dynamic changes to overall gameplay it engenders that could propel Split/Second to the front of the pack.

Initial impressions do little to confound, although this is in no way a negative point: the game is an arcade racer at heart, with the pleasant sense of weighty, powerslide-orientated recklessness encouraged at every turn. Picking from unlicensed (for obvious reasons), similar-yet-legally-distinct-from racing archetypes from three classes (muscle car, super car and sports trucks) players are tasked with tearing around the courses as fast as they can towards the finish line, all the while showing a demented appetite for unfettered dangerous driving.

A tried and true formula that is inherently satisfying, and Split/Second would, as accomplished as these base mechanics are, still be a good game if it did nothing else. Fortunately… it does, and carries off its innovations with verve.

… continued