Solid game with little quirks

Despite the many negative reviews I have the game given a chance to convince myself of the strengths and weaknesses of the game. Selling point was clearly the split screen for four players for me. I have long been waiting for a solid arcade racer, which support splitscreen on the PC and the split-second demo has me not promised. I bought BLUR ultimately needed me, because I do not want to support the aggressive pricing policies of Activision, since I expect that such an expensive product is free of defects - and that's definitely not BLUR.

First the positive aspects of the game:

The graphic is beyond all doubt. No wow factor, but by and by solid crafted tracks, great effects and a very frugal engine, as a smooth gaming (also in split-screen) make me a good impression. With a Core 2 Duo, 2048 RAM and a GF 8800GTS with (only) 320MB I can play the game at 1680x1050 with 4xAA butterweich - for a definite plus!

The sound joins as a seamlessly. The soundtrack is fitting the engine sounds are very nice and fit the car. Unfortunately, however, have 2-3 cars the same sound, since you could vote even finer. But the effects on the track, as the menu are designed excellently and lovingly.

The gameplay generally tells me also highly: The power-ups and car classes are well balanced and the fleet is varied and very suitable for the game. Rather than simply insert Upgraded cars accesses BLUR here to real cars like the Golf W12, BMW Tii Concept ones or Viper Venom 1000. that exist in reality.

The power-ups remember their function sharply Mario Kart, here and there there are even small allusions to the big brother.

The operational behavior (normally I play as car fanatics prefer simulations) I find very fitting and much better than in split-second of the game, with the car also clearly distinguished from each other.

All in all, run the race very round, both in splitscreen as well as in single player, which is due to the really very good AI that uses its power-ups make sense and anything goes strung on a cord.

For single player career, I want to say that the variety may be relatively low, but all game modes have their charm. Here, the balancing is partially not very successful, but with a couple of attempts to also creates here every challenge. Through the partly very different running race course also never comes to boredom.

I would like to highlight that there are entirely new challenges for the online part of the game, to discover new mods, ranks and then some. Thus, the game has almost two motivating campaigns, an offline and online. Where you can at any time also share its offline status with friends and take your place on leaderboards - really very successful and simple!

Let us now, although I very succeeded find the gameplay to the aspects why I give the game only four stars:

As would be the completely screwed-up control. In the race, like to run everything smoothly so after getting used, however, the menu can be only on the keyboard to navigate (with often completely nonsensical commands). Because you realize that the game was programmed more for the console. The menu weakness I would still be able to overlook if you could at least choose their own key assignment. Unfortunately, the game only two (for keyboard) or three (for Controller) Basic Settings, free key assignment does not exist - totally incomprehensible to me. In addition, only supports the XBox360 controller. Therefore the steering wheel, you can forget - if you use a different controller, you have to konfiguerieren this with Xpadder itself - also very cumbersome. In split-screen, there are firmly prescribed and very useful free key bindings for keyboard - here Activision necessarily with a patch rework! Finally, one can expect that for the excessive price also.

Another negative point is the fact that you can put together any individual race in single player. Only the career events are available here, but where you can not change anything.

Also negatively: In my first search for online servers I have never found that, the game has always automatically creates a separate server. After a brief online research, I then found that this is due to the firewall and I had to unlock the ports on Rooter himself. I'm assuming that many players have this problem and as long as that is not patched, it will be very, very empty in online mode.

All negative points could Activision eliminate with a patch. The majority of them are attributable only to the PC version. That's why I can recommend for consoles BLUR necessarily for PC you have to be aware of the control debacle.
Nevertheless BLUR is one of the best arcade racers of recent years with very high fun factor, plenty of variety and a great fleet.