Pearl in the rough. If Just Cause and Burnout had a baby after an intense night of hate f*cking on top of a gasoline doused room. If Chris from Total Drama Island had the US defense budget.
That's Split/Second
Truth be told, this game is more of a "Mixed" for me (god Steam please add a Mixed rating already), and its main gimmick is, ultimately, fun and cathartic enough that I'm willing to look over several design flaws. However, there's PLENTY of them. Disclaimer: I won everything in the career mode in first place.
PROS:
The gimmick in question: this racing game is like an arcadesim obstacle course except the drivers control the obstacles, said obstacles also make california suddenly explode and make everything around you fall apart.
You can activate traps ahead of you to get anyone in front out of your way. You can also cause big events that radically alter the track, creating a new route to follow. Other events don't alter the route but are a major disaster that cause a lot of damage. If you're going last, these are the ones that put you ahead. The "blue shell", sort of speak.
This is accomplished by charging your powerplay bar by getting air time, drifting, drafting and close calls from avoiding getting wrecked by the AI trying to screw you. You can fill up to 3 bars, filling the third one let's you activate these "Route changes" and "Big disasters" consuming all 3 in one go.
It is incredibly cinematic while remaining fully in gameplay, fun to pull off, the route changes are amazing and there's always a sensation that you need to stay on your feet 'cause as soon as you blink, it could be over.
CONS:
Everything else.
UI:
Somehow slow and clunky. Finishing an event will force you to watch each transition animation between tabs and screens. You'll find yourself trying to tap the button to skip forward so the UI catches up and let's you advance but NOPE, there's a really annoying delay 'cause it wont let you do sh*t until it finishes.
Vehicle customization:
Entirely pointless and very minimal. You complete challenges that earn you decals which are then automatically applied to the vehicle. You can't put them on yourself. The only thing you can modify is the color, and even then it's underused 'cause when you finish a race, you can instantly go to another one, but it'll only let you pick a car, not the color. The only way to pick one again is to exit the entire event and go back to the season menu.
Race types:
Race. Elimination. Chopper. Air Revenge. Time Attack. Truck. That's about it.
--Race and Elimination are the only decent ones.
--Time Attack had this funny idea where some psychopath said "what if you had to race under sensitive time stress while the map collapses around you?"
--Truck has you run around a very wide track while a Truck throws barrels at you like Mad Max Donkey Kong. Blue ones stun you, red ones kill you. My only gripe with them is when they drop 'em with you really close to their back, giving no chance to avoid.
--Chopper and Air Revenge took the annoyingness of Time Attacks to the extreme. In the first one you need to run around the track while a chopper actively shoots you with rockets, while Air Revenge is about deflecting said rockets back to the chopper. These two events are by far the worst ones. The indicators of the missile blast radius are grossly innaccurate and annoying. They either hit you full force and stun you outside of what SEEMS to be its radius, and others, it does nothing. Not only that but they are programmed to home in on you. You can't outspeed them, only avoid. Also, when they lock on and you'd think they're gonna strike in one spot, their targets will MOVE TOWARDS YOU. The pinnacle of stupidity for this event is when you're in a track with very tight streets that barely give room for maneuver. Multiple times I've encountered myself driving into a street fully blocked by these indicators where the missiles would land. I could do nothing.
++++In Chopper, it's about dodging and surviving long enough that you reach certain score. You have a limit of 3 lives and each barrage you cleanly avoid by not getting stunned, you gain a score multiplier. These stack.
++++In Air Revenge you have to take down the Chopper on a limited amount of time. This one gets annoying 'cause to deflect rockets back, you have to use your powerplay bar. You're kinda forced to use all 3 ones to deduct 4 bars from its health, 'cause using 1 bar is entirely pointless. However, if you get taken down by a rocket, you wont lose a live, but you'll lose time and also your entire powerplay bar will be depleted, so you might as well restart. I'd personally fix this event by making specially designated tracks for it that are actually wider and also make the missile blast radius and area that would 100% stun your car clearer.
AI:
Disgusting. Gross. One of the most rubberbandy AIs I've ever seen, and I've played NFSU1 ffs. This thing is programmed to overtake you no matter what and there's nothing you can do about it. Not only that, but if you're going first, you'll just have to pray you REALLY wrecked them good before passing them, 'cause otherwise there's no way to defend yourself, and believe me, they WILL throw the whole city on you. Not only that, but they also have a pact of non aggression 'cause they wont try to wreck each other. This results in particularly gross situations where 1st and 2nd place could be 8 whole seconds ahead of you, which is a lot. What's also infuriating is when they'll use powerplays literally in your face giving zero time to react. F*ck Vixen and Raptor btw.
Gameplay:
Needs tweaking. The driving physics are weird. The cars understeer like hell as if it needed to first send the request to human resources, and the only car one with decent turning is the 3rd to last you unlock. The last Hanzo one. Drifting forgot its supposed to help you take turns, not send you straight towards a wall. It feels like it could really use adjustment so you have more control over it. Also this game could've REALLY used a nitrus option for the problem mentioned above of rubberbanding, 'cause you can also end in a situation where you have no powerplay bars to try to at least wreck whoever's ahead of you, and filling them is a pain in the ass 'cause drifting is not reliable, air time is rare, close calls are 50/50 and drafting is non-existent when the person ahead of you is 5 seconds ahead. Another thing that's horrid is how your car is seemingly made out of paper and the AI not only will pass you like it's nothing but also there's nothing you can do. You can't push them off, it's like they're moving battering rams while you're in a go-kart.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Performance:
The game is locked to 30fps and the 60fps patch makes it bug like hell. Also this thing does NOT like to be minimized. It WILL crash if you alt tab. Also, small bit, I played with my own personal music on and it wouldn't let me use my skip button to change song, like this game is really overzealous with anything from outside.
FINAL REMARK (does anyone even read these?)
All of these things are worth forgiving to an extent, it was first of its kind, a rough yet interesting experiment that could've layed a good foundation for something more refined and better tuned. An explosive 1st season for Split/Second with potential.
But...this game was published by Disney, and just like everything they touch, a Season 2 is either destined for failure, or better left as a fairy tale of "what if".
