Blur

Rating: E10+

Score: 9.0/10

In the real world, vehicles don't come with machine guns or turtle shells for taking out pesky slow drivers. In video games, logic can be dropped and vehicles can shoot lightning, fly, and transform into fighting robots. One of the biggest series in vehicular madness is Mario Kart. It has the frantic madness that any gamer can enjoy, but some may prefer it to be a tad more "mature". Well, welcome to the world of Blur, a sort of "higher class" Mario Kart. This is available for the Xbox 360, PC, and Playstation 3.

The gameplay is quite interesting, although as aforementioned, not completely original. You race in copies of real cars and use energy powers you find in boxes around the track. These energy powers consist of a large number of different effects. Some are as subtle as shooting little bolts of lightning to mess up your opponent's driving; others are as abrupt as completely flipping over other cars with a massive shockwave. You can hold up to three powers at a time, and use them whenever you feel you need them. Some combined effects can lead to some interesting strategies, like using a shockwave to flip your opponent in the air then nitro under them to do a very impressive overtake.

The story of Blur is simple: there is none. You want fans, so you go on random missions to get them. Each mission is divided in categories, and each category divided again in sub-categories. The initial category offers different locations and sometimes different features, while each sub-category offers gameplay modes.

Of course, you have the standard racing (well, in this games standard), along with checkpoints, and a sort of battle mode where you attack opponents racing around a track. Of course, it's nothing in comparison to Mario Kart Battle Mode, but it's exciting in its own right.

There's a nice selection of cars too for a game that didn't really need such a selection. Lotus Exige, Dodge Vipers, and even Jeeps all join in. Each car has different stats in accelerating, top speed, and grip. Some cars can also take more abuse then others as well, which matters when you plan on taking first place and all your opponents want pole position for themselves.

The best way to describe the action is it's combining video game action and fake, hollywood-style, over-the-top action film-style racing into one game. It's fast, it's frantic, and it's full of flash. All the speed in the world though isn't enough to outrun its lack of depth.