Blur (PlayStation 3)

Blur is an action-oriented racing game very similar to the Mario Kart series. But instead of driving on go-carts through colorful environments shooting bananas and turtle shells, the game features dozens of licensed sports-cars from several different manufacturers including the Audi Quattro, the Nissan 350Z and the Shelby GT-500 racing around fantasy and real-world tracks.

Scattered around these tracks are three different types of power-ups including a repair kit and a shield as well as five different weapons, like the target-seeking Shunt, which of course are used to get rid of the competition. To that end, each car is very unique in its statistics like strength, acceleration and such, making it a very tactical decision which one to use for the different types of races and tracks. The events include normal races with and without power-ups as well as pure destruction focused ones either taking place in specially build arenas or on normal race tracks.

The core of the game is the single-player campaign. Divided into nine groups and taking place at over 14 different real-world locations, the player has to make his way to the top. Each group includes several different events including a boss fight. If the player wins the latter, he earns their cars including the unique mods and finishing. To unlock new events and groups, the player has to earn lights – up to seven for each event. While he gets five lights for taking first place, the final two can only be obtained by pleasing the fans.

Each event features a Fan Target and a Fan Run. Fan Runs are mini-challenges which are activated during a race and require the player to drive through a series of glowing arcs – while the normal race still continues. Besides a bonus light, this will also earn him additional fans. The rest of the fans which are needed to reach the Fan Target are “collected” by shooting and destroying other cars or by impressing with cool driving skills like making drifts or long jumps and such.

The game also offers a multiplayer mode for up to four players on one machine or up to 20 online. While offline multiplayer only allows the players to choose from all the available cars, online multiplayer offers unlockable car upgrades and mods. In addition the player advances in rank by winning events. Once he reaches level 50, he can choose to enter Legendary mode. Similar to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the player then loses all his accomplishments and is reset to rank 1 but earns an exclusive Legendary car for doing so. This reset can be done up to ten times.