When it comes to the racing genre, developers seem to get pigeonholed into specific game types more so than those who work in other genres. Titles from Polyphony are always going to be hyper realistic and unapologetically sim-based; while a game from Criterion will invariably focus on speed and providing a pure arcade racing experience. Very rarely do teams try and break away from their established track record and make something new, but that's precisely the plan for Bizarre Creations. The crew behind the Project Gotham Racing series are now set to bring you Blur, an action racer that takes looks a whole lot different than anything they've ever done before.

Blur is a game that can best be described as an action racer, and one which seems to share quite a bit of common ground with Burnout and Wipeout. As players race around the track they can pick up weapons to attack others or help preserve themselves long enough to finish the lap. In the demo we checked out there were five different power-ups available, and there are plenty more planned where that came from. Some of the showcased pickups featured a shunt which would blast directly out in front and mess up enemy vehicles, a lightning strike that would take out nearby combatants and a sort of repulsor field which gets rid of those pesky foes who may be trying to trade paint with you or grind you into a barrier. There's also a nasty mine you can leave behind for foes and a temporary speed boost when the time comes to break out of the pack.



While there are multiple attacks available players are rarely left completely defenseless. Holding down a button surrounds your vehicle with a shield so that you can safely endure opponent attacks with no penalty whatsoever. The game does limit the number of times you can employ the shield though, so if you repeatedly drive into mines or act as your foes' permanent punching bag then eventually there will come a time when you simply cannot be saved.

In a surprising turn of events the folks at Bizarre Creations have been able to keep their licensing agreements with a number of car manufacturers, so players will finally be able to smash up those super-expensive cars that they can never hope to own. This is a big deal because traditionally manufacturers have been extremely reluctant to see their cars in a damaged state in games, which has played a large role in the fact that we've never seen body damage in any of the Gran Turismo titles. The winds are starting to shift though, and it appears that Blur will definitely be right at home creating smoking heaps of twisted, charred metal.

Talking to the developers behind the game one gets the sense that they decided to create a more arcade-style racer simply because they wanted to make a game that was much more approachable than anything they had done before. The PGR series had a notoriously high barrier for entry, and only the hardest of the hardcore could succeed seeing as how they were the only ones who had spent hours upon hours exhaustively upgrading and carefully tuning their cars. With this new game everyone is pretty much on the same playing ground, and you can go from worst to first without having to invest unreasonable quantities of time.

It's unclear at this early stage if Blur will have any specific elements that allow it to stand apart from the racing crowd, but it definitely has the pedigree. Now that the Bizarre team is working independently of Microsoft they can really let their imaginations run wild and create a brand new IP unlike anything they've done before. That should indeed be exciting news to fans of the racing genre.