Blur

Blur (Known as Blur Racerz in Japan) is an arcade-style racing video game released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 25, 2010. It was developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision in North America, Europe and Japan. Blur was the penultimate game developed by Bizarre Creations before they were shut down by Activision on February 18, 2011.

Gameplay
Blur is an arcade-style racing game that is very similar to the Mario Kart games, being the use of power-ups the best example of this, however, it employees real-life vehicles and locations and the power-ups of the game are a bit different from the ones used in the Mario Kart franchise. Vehicles are divided into four classes: D, C, B and A, being the class D vehicles the slowest ones and the class A vehicles the faster ones, every vehicle has different stats and handling type that differentiates them from each-other.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Even if the main concept of mixing kart-racing and vehicular combat genres is something that has already been seen in previous years, on practice it's way much better and original in its own way. In this case, the element that puts Blur into a different place from the other Mario Kart clones is the usage of officially licensed cars from several brands for the vehicle roster and real-life locations for the tracks of the game.
 * 2) *Heck, even one of the commercials for this game makes fun of the kart racing genre by involving a character named Brock Lee, fascinated by the chaotic world of Blur, while being trapped in his "over-friendly" kart racing world.
 * 3) The graphic style that involves neon colors and lighting is very unique and good-looking for the sight, and not only that, for 2010s standards, the graphics are very detailed and well-worked, the best example of this is on how detailed are the maps, from the textures and skyboxes to the background elements like the people spectating the race and many of the special effects, like the smoke trails that come from a damaged vehicle.
 * 4) There is a large amount of strategies that you can apply to the races thanks to the different driving stats of the vehicles, the power-ups and the mods (In the case of the multiplayer mode), for example, if you want to focus on winning the race rather than destroying your enemies, you can choose a grip vehicle and the Front Runner mod (Which gives you a nitro every time you complete a lap) or you can choose a drift vehicle and the drifter mod (Which gives you a nitro every time you perform a super drift. On the other hand, if you want to rely more on destroying your opponents, you can equip several mods that could improve your attack power-ups or the ramming capacity of your vehicle.
 * 5) As it was mentioned in the previous point, every vehicle has a different handling, learning curve and driving style, you have grip vehicles that rely more on taking the curves without a lot of problems, drift vehicles that can take sharp curves easier by drifting, vehicles that mix both grip and drifting styles and off-road vehicles that don't lose speed or control while driving on earthy surfaces. Vehicles also have different weights that can make them faster and vulnerable to ramming or slower and resistant to collisions.
 * 6) Speaking of gameplay and learning curve, it's pretty easy to get used to the game, mostly because every new element that is subsequently added to the gameplay in the single player mode is very well explained and added at a key moment of the game, which equilibrates the learning curve in a very optimal way until the player can adequately master the mechanics.
 * 7) Lengthy and challenging single player mode in which there are a total of four gamemodes scattered in all of the available events of the game:
 * 8) * Racing: A single racing that consists of 2 or 3 laps (Depending on the map) and 19 CPU controlled rivals.
 * 9) * Checkpoint: An event that consists of racing through all gates before the given timer reaches zero.
 * 10) * Destruction: An event in which the player has to destroy as many vehicles as possible before the time runs out.
 * 11) * One on One: A 1 vs 1 battle in which the player faces the boss of his/her respective league. It can be won by beating or destroying the rival.
 * 12) For every event completed in the first three places, you will gain a certain amount of Blur lights: three if you finish third, four if you finish second and five if you finish on first place, however, there are two more additional lights that could help you to unlock further stages from the very beginning of the game, the first one will be given if the player passes through 12 portals located at key positions of the event and the second one if the player gets a certain amount of fans in a single race, something that adds a lot of replay value, since the player can always get back to previous levels to unlock the remaining lights.
 * 13) After beating a boss (Whether by beating or destroying him), you will unlock his/her special vehicle and a perk for the single player mode, however, the unlocked vehicle will also be available to use in the multiplayer mode, something that could greatly help to the progress of leveling up since every special vehicle has maxed-out stats, unfortunately, you have to be in the same level in which the vehicle is unlocked.
 * 14) There are more than 50 cars (Approximately 17 per class) available that the player can unlock by gaining fans and leveling up (In the case of the multiplayer mode), and what's more, the vehicle roster includes but is not limited to emblematic sport vehicles, classical muscle cars, modified pick-up trucks and many more. Also, as it was mentioned before, every vehicle has its own driving style and stats that make it different from the others.
 * 15) The game has a magnificent and memorable soundtrack that is mostly composed of electronic, drum and bass and electronic rock songs of various artists like The Qemists, Coldcut, The Heavy and The Crystal Method, on the other hand, the original soundtrack composed exclusively for the game made by Jacknife Lee is also great and fits well with the artistic style of the game.
 * 16) It's one of the first videogames (If not the first one) to implement an option to turn on the usage of licensed music during the races. For normal players this might seem useless or even annoying (Since it's turned off by default), but for people who upload videos or make streams it's a more practical way to upload content about the game without getting copyright issues.
 * 17) Speaking of audio, the sound design of the game is quite good to, from the sound effects that can be heard in the menus that somehow fit perfectly with the game's aesthetic to the sound effects of the engines of the vehicles, which are completely unique for every vehicle, allowing the players to recognize the vehicles much easier than it should be.
 * 18) The multiplayer mode of the game is quite addicting and adds a lot of new features in contrast to the single player mode:
 * 19) * Some new gamemodes are added, which are Motor Mash (A demolition derby gamemode) and World Tour (A gamemode that sets up random vehicles and levels in each round), and in addition to these, team-based gamemodes are also added, but only for normal races and motor mash gamemodes.
 * 20) * Three new styles of paintjobs are added, which are metallic, pearl and candy paintjobs that were not available in the single player mode and add a significative amount of replay value and game progression, since you need to finish first in a certain amount of races in order to unlock them.
 * 21) * In a pretty similar way to the Call of Duty games, perks are also added to the game mechanics, which consist of several defensive, offensive or race-oriented skills that bring the player certain abilities under specific conditions, like stronger attacks, gaining a power-up each time a power-up hits a shield, etc.
 * 22) ** Multiplayer mode can also be in either four-player split-screen or online play with up to 20 players.
 * 23) * Another element added that is reminiscent of the Call of Duty games is the ability of becoming a "Legend" player, by doing this, you will get back to level 1 and every challenge you completed previously will be restarted to zero, but in exchange, you will receive a maxed-out tuned vehicle, usually vehicles that are unlocked in later levels, something that is actually helpful to counter the fact that all of your progress was reset, also, in a very similar way to WiR #8, every legendary vehicle unlocked will also be available to use in the single player mode, but, unlike the boss vehicles unlocked in the single player mode, the legendary vehicles will be available even from the very beginning of the single player mode.
 * 24) If you're not feeling good enough to make it to the regular races in the multiplayer, you can play in the "Driving School" gamemode, in which you can play against players that are between the level 1 and the level 10, after leveling up for a while in this game mode, you will unlock a decent amount of mechanics and better vehicles, implying that it's very probable that you'll already be good enough to race in the normal racing modes.
 * 25) At the time of release, it costed only £30 in the United Kingdon and $35 in the United States, a pretty decent price for the quality of the game and the fun that it can grant to the player, and what's more, with the pass of the time (And probably because Activision wanted the game to sell more copies), the game's price was later reduced to $15 or even $10, a price that could be reduced even more during the many Steam sales, being $5 the lowest price registered.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The controls option in the main menu is is very lackluster, consisting of only two layouts available without the possibility of rebinding the keys. In the case of the PC version, this gets much worse because the controls are even more limited due to the lack of analog joysticks and triggers on keyboard, which implies that the player cannot control its speed adequately or view around the car's sides in a more fluent way, putting him/her at a notorious disadvantage against someone who might be using a gamepad.
 * 2) Because of a very probable rushed development cycle, radical changes in the design of the game or licensing issues, a lot of content was cut or modified before the release of the game. All of this content would go unnoticed until the Blur's modding community found out a lot of unused content in the files of the game, some of the content include but are not limited to:
 * 3) * A couple of songs that would play during the races, which are "Freak Me" by Hexstatic and "Lost Weekend" by The Qemists, if you're curious, you can take a listen to them here.
 * 4) * A way more solid driving model that seemed to have better handling controls and physics than the finished game.
 * 5) * Several cutscenes involving all of the main bosses of the game, and, from far, this is the most painful one, because if you look at their respective cutscenes (Here's a video to watch all of the removed cutscenes), you can see that the game was originally going to have a much deeper plot and the characters were going to have a more notorious role in the game and unique personalities that could characterize them from each other's apart from their design.
 * 6) * According to some of the cutscenes, the game had a completely different HUD and interface:
 * 7) ** All of the power-ups had their respective names on the top of their icons.
 * 8) ** The menu interfaces relied more on the use of solid black, orange and green colors rather than the neon blue colors of the finished game.
 * 9) One of the mods available on the multiplayer mode: Drifter, is infamously known for being excessively overpowered and annoying for the rest of the players that don't have it equipped for one or other reason. To explain this, what this mod does is to give the user a nitro power-up every time he/she performs a super drift (Drifting for a long period of time), at first it may sound like if the programmers were thinking of it as something that cannot be achieved easily, but it ended up being the complete opposite, especially because the game's physics favor the constant drifting of the cars and that using a nitro before taking a drift will increase the speed of the progress considerably, and in hands of an experienced player, this mod can practically break the game's balancing from its core. The only possible counter of it is that it can take a lot of time to master this game style.
 * 10) Speaking of mods, only a small handful of them are actually useful in the racing gamemodes, the rest of them are only useful in the motor-mash gamemode (Like Vampiric Wreck), which, unfortunately, is not very played by the community. Another bad point is that some of them barely work, are absolutely useless or just make their respective functions whenever they feel like:
 * 11) * Safety Net claims that it repairs your car when a power-up hits you while you're using a shield, but in reality, the health re-established is very insignificant, to not say non-existent, and it's even less efficient taking in consideration that not many players will hit a player that has an active shield intentionally.
 * 12) * Shielded Bay is only useful when you're playing against a player that has Scrambler (A mod that blocks up the opponent's ability to use power-ups when you use them in reverse) or Decoy Drop (A mod that turns dropped power-ups into portable mines), apart from those two cases, it's entirely useless.
 * 13) * Magnetic Field barely attracts power-ups, since you actually have to drive very close to a power-up to pick it up, which is not very different from driving towards it, although it's only useful to complete a challenge to gain fans.
 * 14) * Mastermine is practically useless in every sense, the only thing that it does is to split up a mine into several small mines when you pass near one, either if it was fired by the player or by an opponent, and what's worse, the damage caused by these small mines is exaggeratedly low, even if you step on all of the small mines, the total amount of damage caused by them is inferior to the damaged caused by a regular mine.
 * 15) The game's physics are not exactly the most enjoyable ones. During normal races, they seem to work properly, but there are times in which they can get really annoying for the player because of how strange they can behave. For instance, the gravity seems to attract the vehicles in a very exaggerated way, something that can be noted when you jump from a ramp or an inclined road, this problem with the physics can lead to a lot of problems during the races (Especially when there are more than 10 players in a single round), because if you get attacked while jumping, the vehicle will "overturn" in a very strange way, like if the game's physics were not able to do that.
 * 16) Some of the vehicles' stats in the menus are misleading in relation to the real stats. For instance, the game says that the Nissan 350Z (Z33) of the Class C (drift spec) and the Chevrolet Camaro SS (Gen 5) of the Class A (pro mod dragster spec) have a very drifty handling respectively, but when you're driving said vehicles, you can see that it's actually pretty hard to drift with them, handling more like a grip or a balanced vehicle instead.
 * 17) The first versions of the game were known for not having a great balance respect to the AI. The opponents on easy were way too easy to beat, but if you increased the difficulty level to medium or even to hard, the complete opposite would happen: all of the opponents would become extremely aggressive and much faster than you, even if you equipped the fastest vehicle of the category, the opponents would still beat you with an excessively big difference of time, something that wasn't helped by the drifty driving model of almost all of the vehicles of the game. This was fixed shortly after the release of the game, but now the AI of the opponents feels extremely weak and evasive at times, even if you're playing on hard difficulty.
 * 18) * Not to mention, in the case of the checkpoint events, the rubberbanding was even worse because the game gave you very little time to get to the checkpoints and augment your remaining time, you had to be a very good driver or lucky to get them in time, or even worse: to get all of the lights of the event, to make matters worse, this problem with the timer was never fixed by the developers.
 * 19) After getting to level 11, you won't be able to play the Driving School gamemode again, this was done on purpose to balance the multiplayer mode, but the problem is that legendary players will not be able to play said gamemode to counter the lack of advantage against players that are in superior levels, probably because the game assumes that, for instance, a "legendary 1 level 1" player is actually a level 51 player.

Ratings
At the time it was released, Blur received generally positive reviews from the critics and the players alike, being mostly praised for its originality, its addictive gameplay, the great quality of the graphics, the usage of real-life vehicles to complement the vehicle roster of the game and the soundtrack. On Metacritic, the PC version holds a score of 81 out of 100. , the Xbox 360 version holds an average of 82 out of 100 and the PlayStation 3 version also has an average score of 81 out of 100.

Amanda L. Kondolojy from Cheat Code Central rated the game with a 4.6 out of 5, talking about the great quality and details of the cars and the tracks, the easy to learn controls and the depth of the single player and multiplayer gamemodes, while criticising how some of the vehicles handled. Shortly describing: "Blur's mix of strategy-based power-ups, load-out menus, and largely varied challenges really make this game a must for all automotive fans. In a genre this oversaturated, it is good to know that there is still some innovation left."

Ryan Davis from Giant Bomb rated the game with four stars out of 5. He said the following in his final verdict: "If you step back and look at the parts, there's a weird dissonance to Blur, and it doesn't seem like it should work as well as it does, even if it can be an imperfect experience. Bizarre Creations has always danced along the line between simulation and style, and this game only serves to further blur that line."

Door Tristan Brinkman op zaterdag from the Dutch website XGN gave the game an 8 out of 10. Prasing the addictive gameplay, the replay value that the game has and how easy are the controls to dominate, but criticizing the variety of the single player mode and the weak graphics and sound effects. His final verdict says: "Blur plays like a more serious Mario Kart and will give you plenty of online fun. The single player lacks variety but this shouldn't stop arcade gamers from buying it."

Sara Borondo from the Spanish website Vandal rated the game with an 8.2 out of 10. Mentioning the originality of the gameplay respect to the games of same genres, the similarity of the fans mechanic with the kudos one from Project Gotham Racing and the very vast multiplayer mode that was inspired from the Modern Warfare's 2 success. Shortly describing: "Blur is an attractive, intense, exciting and fast proposal; the framework it's built on is solid and has potential, and the depth of gameplay is more than satisfying. It only needs to reaffirm its personality and do a little rebalancing."

Legacy and Cancelled Sequel
Despite all of the positive reviews that the game received, it was a huge commercial failure, selling only 31,000 copies in its first five days of release and a total of 500,000 copies in all of the platforms that it was released on. However, the developers were actually intended to continue with the franchise and started to develop a sequel that could add new vehicles, tracks and even natural disasters to add up to the list of hazards available, but due to the Activision's decision to shut down Bizarre Creations, the prototype was lost and only some mute videos that shown up some new things were uploaded by the user VGLens in 2013, two years after the cancellation of the game. On June 1st of 2019, the prototype of Blur 2 was finally discovered on an Xbox 360 development console from an auction by an user named "Edward_2452", the user said that the development kit was faulty, but the game was still working very well and uploaded some screenshots of the same along with a link to download the game.

Apart from all of this, it's very important to mention that nowadays the game has still a small but dedicated fanbase that makes online tournaments, game modifications, music videos and research about beta versions of the game and its sequel.

Another fact that it's worth to mention is that Blur is currently one of the most wanted and expensive games of all Steam. According to the website "inventory.gift", there are only 41 copies left and most of them are sold by abysmal amounts of money or TF2 keys, usually between 2,000 and 5,000 USD just for one copy.

Reviews
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Longplays
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Gameplays
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Cancelled Sequel Footage
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Blur 2 Beta Gameplay
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Trivia

 * The font used in the game's cover bears an uncanny resemblance to the one used in alternative rock band Blur's 1997 self-titled album.