The New Flesh

Split/Second wasn’t even on my radar before I went along to it’s developer presentation on Friday. I went along anyway and I have to say was really impressed. I later got to play a couple of races on the show floor and see how it actually handles. It’s a racing game of course, it’s from Black Rock who are the same guys who did Pure and it’s looking pretty good. It’s in pre-alpha and set for a 2010 release on the three powerful platforms but it’s already looking very nice. The concept is that your racing on a future racing TV show and the racers, both you and the AI get to set off traps and shortcuts ahead of you to spice up the action. It’s a paper thin excuse for some big set piece Michael Bay style explosions in an arcade racing game but who cares, this ain’t Heavy Rain. I’m slightly worried it’ll be two easy to learn the tracks and all they’re traps to the point where in spite of the eye candy you treat it just like a normal racer but I think as a silly racer it’ll good generate some good moments, particularly in multiplayer. It’s certainly given the arcade racer a little bit of a shake, enough to set it apart from the likes of Need for Speed and it’s very very pretty so yeah, I’m adding this to my watch list.