POSTED 16/6/10


SPLIT/SECOND

Disney Interactive
PS3 (also on Xbox 360, PC, iPhone)

This game cheats. It couldn’t cheat more if it was Mayor Cheaty McCheat of Cheatytown. Saying that, if you’re most people you’ll have looked ahead to our rating, so you may be wondering why the highness.

Split/Second is, essentially, the movie Death Race (Stallone or Statham, whatever) meets Ridge Racer and the Burnout series. Frantic car racing on a series of craftily constructed tracks in a TV ‘reality’ (cough!) world featuring numerous events that can be triggered to rain pain down on your opposition after earning points through drifting, drafting and more. These range from blowing up trucks to pushing the ‘kaboom!’ button on dams, trains and even crashing massive cargo planes into rivals. Yep, if you’ve had it up to here with motherfucking rivals near your motherfucking plane, you have options.

As racing games go it looks stylish, handles mostly well (depending upon which vehicle you choose), feels speedy (go for ‘bumper cam’) and offers challenge – all desirable things. However, it also cheats its arse off. In the history of gaming we’ve never come across a game with such duplicitous AI. Ever. You can be going absolutely full tilt and suddenly several opponents will just casually cruise by. It can be frustrating, but ‘I’m gonna beat you sucker’ frustrating, rather than the ‘this is just shit’ kind. When you do win, and with strategic use of the power plays at your disposal you will, you feel like the pinnacle of awesomeness – and that’s what gaming’s all about.

We’ll still punch any of the game’s developers we ever meet though...

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