Blur (new Bizarre racer)

[Tap In]

my pleasure Billy



here is a Eurogamer (DF) Tech interview with Bizarre devs.

snip...
Technically way ahead of its predecessor, and indeed virtually identical cross-platform, Blur uses state-of-the-art technology to create something never seen before - a full 720p HD road racer with support for up to 20 cars on-screen simultaneously, a wide range of dynamic visual effects, plus both online and split-screen support.
Sensational to watch and hugely enjoyable to play, it's clear that Blur is a remarkable technical showcase. Bizarre Creations' graphics programmers Steven Tovey and Charlie Birtwistle were more than happy to discuss at length the story behind the game in a special, extended interview with Digital Foundry....


This new engine, which we've dubbed "Horizon", is what we're using on Blur. So, whereas on PGR4 we would generally spend 15+ms rendering on one CPU, with Horizon we now spend more like 5-8ms doing rendering across all cores/SPUs simultaneously, and we're rendering a lot more stuff than we ever did in PGR.
Getting our render code small enough to fit into the modest memory you have on a PS3 SPU was certainly a challenge, but was essential for decent performance on PS3....

Digital Foundry: You've talked in your previous tech presentations about your "free" lighting system with the SPUs in Blur. Surely there's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to rendering! What's the secret?
Steven Tovey: [Laughs] "Free" was probably a bad choice of word to put in those slides in retrospect. Of course nothing is free; you're always paying for it somewhere. What I meant was, the lighting didn't add any time to the length of the frame as it's performed in parallel on the SPUs with other non-dependent rendering tasks.



..snip more

 

[joker454]

Woha...thanks very very much for your detailed impressions!!!
You just wiped away my last concerns...
I think I need this game!

If you are into arcade racers then go for it! It's amazingly fun online, it just does so much right. It's one of those games that is as much fun if you are last place or first place. Last place online lets you cause so much chaos that it's almost worth lingering behind a little bit just to smash everyone with powerups. First place means looking over your shoulder, but they give you many ways to defend yourself. This game is just bad ass. I played late last night for about 90 minutes or so in 20 person matches, those are the most fun. Their first online category is for when you are between level 1 and 10, but you don't need to stay in there. I got to level 5 then switched over to the 20 player matches where people were much higher level than me, but I was still able to effectively compete although I could never win However getting 4th place out of 20 when I was level 5 and everyone else was level 20+ made it all the more satisfying. Seems like lots of girls are playing this one also online as well.

here is a Eurogamer (DF) Tech interview with Bizarre devs.

Yeah this game is pretty impressive technically, it handles so much on screen chaos yet it remains buttery smooth. Awesome work. I mean, is there really anything else as satisfying as using the barge powerup in a 20 person game of Blur? It's just hysterical.

 

[Tap In]

If you are into arcade racers then go for it! It's amazingly fun online, it just does so much right. It's one of those games that is as much fun if you are last place or first place. Last place online lets you cause so much chaos that it's almost worth lingering behind a little bit just to smash everyone with powerups. First place means looking over your shoulder, but they give you many ways to defend yourself. This game is just bad ass. I played late last night for about 90 minutes or so in 20 person matches, those are the most fun. Their first online category is for when you are between level 1 and 10, but you don't need to stay in there. I got to level 5 then switched over to the 20 player matches where people were much higher level than me, but I was still able to effectively compete although I could never win However getting 4th place out of 20 when I was level 5 and everyone else was level 20+ made it all the more satisfying. Seems like lots of girls are playing this one also online as well.

.

you are way better than me evidently.

I'll keep trying though


oh... and TEAM racing is kick ass fun too as you can add to the point total without being in the top places. Never have a problem getting in a race but do wish there were more people playing online.

 

[Tap In]

Meta Score-82


Giant Bomb-4/5
Gamespot-8/10
Gametrailers-87/100
Telegraph UK-90/100
Game Informer-85/100
Euro Gamer-8/10
Cheat code central-92/100
IGN-7/10
PlayGamer UK-9/10
NowGamer UK-9/10

 

[nightshade]

ohk quick...Blur or Split Second..??
I can get only one of these two for the moment

 

[digitalwanderer]

Blur, definitely Blur.

 

[deeFive]

has anybody tried this on ps3 yet, i loved the 360 beta but im going to sell my 360 once my live sub runs out and want to know if the 4p modes were in the game

 

[Billy Idol]

If you are into arcade racers then go for it! It's amazingly fun online, it just does so much right. It's one of those games that is as much fun if you are last place or first place. Last place online lets you cause so much chaos that it's almost worth lingering behind a little bit just to smash everyone with powerups. First place means looking over your shoulder, but they give you many ways to defend yourself. This game is just bad ass. I played late last night for about 90 minutes or so in 20 person matches, those are the most fun. Their first online category is for when you are between level 1 and 10, but you don't need to stay in there. I got to level 5 then switched over to the 20 player matches where people were much higher level than me, but I was still able to effectively compete although I could never win However getting 4th place out of 20 when I was level 5 and everyone else was level 20+ made it all the more satisfying. Seems like lots of girls are playing this one also online as well.

Yeah this game is pretty impressive technically, it handles so much on screen chaos yet it remains buttery smooth. Awesome work. I mean, is there really anything else as satisfying as using the barge powerup in a 20 person game of Blur? It's just hysterical.

Thanks for the impressions! So online is good as well!!
Now I also recognized that there are a lot of reviews around of this game...what wonders me: how did this slip under my radar? There was not so much hype or PR involved with this game it seems!
Even this thread is rather empty it seems, but I am definitely in now!

 

[patsu]

has anybody tried this on ps3 yet, i loved the 360 beta but im going to sell my 360 once my live sub runs out and want to know if the 4p modes were in the game

The PS3 trailer here mentioned 4P:
http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/1422...project/videos/blur_trl_multiplayer_5610.html

 

[joker454]

So online is good as well!!
Now I also recognized that there are a lot of reviews around of this game...what wonders me: how did this slip under my radar? There was not so much hype or PR involved with this game it seems!
Even this thread is rather empty it seems, but I am definitely in now!

The 20 player online is epically good imho. Last night I was near last place. Someone torpedo'd me right as I used a nitro powerup, and I was hurled forwards in the air over everyone and plopped into 2nd place. It briefly flashed a message on screen on how I just nitro passed over 10 cars. Everyone was asking me how the hell I did that, it was like a scene from a movie where a burning car flies over everyone else to land 2nd place haha, awesomeness. This game actually also slipped under my radar. I knew nothing about it until the beta, and then I was hooked

 

[rabidrabbit]

has anybody tried this on ps3 yet, i loved the 360 beta but im going to sell my 360 once my live sub runs out and want to know if the 4p modes were in the game

Eurogamer.net has a detailed comparison of PS3 and xbox360 builds.
There doesn't seem to be much difference between them, both are technically very good and run with stable framerate.
XB360 seems to have a slight advantage with AA, but apparently it's not that noticeable in gameplay.

 

[Antan]

The PS3 version is top drawer. Technically superb and very smooth. As Rabbit says, 4xmsaa on 360 and 2xmsaa with an edge blur on PS3. It looks very very clean. Really good game aswell! Probably the closest multiplat game ive come across. BC must be applauded. The Eurogamer article is really very good. Lots of PS3/SPU talk.

 

[Billy Idol]

Bought it (PS3 version)...must wait till weekend before I can play...and then have to split my time with RDR (Xbox360 version)...life as a gamer is really hard

 

[rabidrabbit]

Bought it (PS3 version)...must wait till weekend before I can play...and then have to split my time with RDR (Xbox360 version)...life as a gamer is really hard

Stop complaining! I have FFXIII, RDR, GoW3 that I must split my time with, and I'd like to finish Assassins Creed II and Modern Warfare 2 too. And I'd really like to buy Blur, as it's been too long since a decent racing game.
Oh yes, and I still haven't finished that PS2 Okami and FFXII that I'd really really like to play, also Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess are there waiting to be finished. Should also find the time to at least open the last island on GTA4.

I hate to leave my games unfinished

 

[Arwin]

I hate to leave my games unfinished

Stop buying new games then.

EDIT: 8000!

 

[Billy Idol]

Stop buying new games then.

Don't you know this feeling??
Reading about a game and then suddenly in only one second your body decides that he wants to play this game....*now*, because he has the feeling that he cannot survive without it...so I go out and buy it for him!!
Am I addicted?

 

[nightshade]

Don't you know this feeling??
Reading about a game and then suddenly in only one second your body decides that he wants to play this game....*now*, because he has the feeling that he cannot survive without it...so I go out and buy it for him!!
Am I addicted?

Even I raise the same question...cause I feel the same way.

 

[patsu]

Ha ha, I'd love to buy Blur now but I am not a racing fan. GT5 (Eye candy), Mario Kart/Modnation Racer (Rubberband AI) and MotorStorm (Rubberband AI) are probably enough for me.

I did buy Burnout Paradise when its price dropped just to support good titles. May be this time I'll do the same.

And yes, have Y3, 3D Dot Heroes to go through. I also want to support Resonance of Fate, and RDR later.

EDIT: Thanks for coding for SPUs though. Will have a closer look after I wrapped up the 2 existing titles.

 

[Rolf N]

Don't you know this feeling??
Reading about a game and then suddenly in only one second your body decides that he wants to play this game....*now*, because he has the feeling that he cannot survive without it...so I go out and buy it for him!!
Am I addicted?

You're not kidding. I've bought 15+ games in the past two months. I was doing so great last year, but now I'm back to collecting like a madman.

Usually when I see a game I'm even slightly interested in dropping to or below 18£, the fear grabs me that it may go out of stock soon. That's how I bought Cross Edge, can you believe it? Cross Edge!

Anyway, Blur looks mighty fine, and I hope it does well for Bizarre. The relative bombing of The Club was unfortunate, though easily explained in hindsight: it just didn't appear to be what it actually was, which made it a hard sell. Blur seems to only have a tiny, tiny bit of the same deceit going on. Too tiny to be an issue IMO.

 

[Billy Idol]

Started playing this baby. Started with SP.
Superb game I have to admitt (the DF videos did not trick me): gameplay is super, very fun+lot's of action+lot's of "split second decisions"

Often you could win races all though you are far behind, sometime I win races with just 1 meter gap or so - cool! In this respect it absolutely reminds me of Motorstorm: crazy action until the last second of each race!!
Beat the first boss - I like this sort of SP campaign very much, get even my first MOD - cool!!

Graphics are great too (playing the PS3 version): super effects, no slow down, great textures and the feeling of speed is great, especially with boost (hint to DF: try first person view - makes action so more intense ...I think now he hates me...)!

BTW, is the performance of the game different in FPS view compared to TPS view?? After all, in FPS view you don't have to render the own car...should give a performance boost, right?

I also tried MP online: I did one race and my buddy did one...he even wons his race!!

Up to now, very happy about this game: I can highly recommend it to guys who like a mixture of Wipeout (Power Up)+Burnout (racing)+MS(action) with great graphics and lots of different game options (SP, MP: online, split screen, LAN)!!