Bringing The Boom To Burnout 

Early noughties racing games were something else, weren’t they? Pages of the “How to drive safely and responsibly” rulebook were ripped out and set ablaze, heralding a new age of destructive four-wheeled dashes to the finish line. The Burnout franchise is popularly considered the progenitor of this new breed of racer, where crashing and wrecking fellow drivers is rewarded rather than punished, and admiring hunks of crumpled metal became a sight for pleasure rather than dread. One of this new breed of racing games is 2010’s Split/Second: Velocity, was both a thrilling love letter and written warning to Burnout that the heat is about to get even hotter and that you might have Crash Time, but we’ve got collapsing towers capable of cracking and ripping apart the ground beneath whilst a parade of explosions ripples through the wreckage.

First, some background: I had never heard of Split/Second: Velocity until one day, I was flicking through a now-defunct UK games magazine whilst waiting in a car outside of a supermarket. I happened upon the review section where this racing game called Split/Second got a review and an eye-opening 86%, and I thought to myself, I have to give this racing game a go pronto! So, obviously, I waited for Split/Second to come out to discover why it was so highly touted. Then, I witnessed wholesale mayhem on a Richter Scale busting level, where the environment is deadlier than the opposition.

An Explosive TV Show

Close-knit tussles for position are intense jousts – watch yourself!

Split/Second is uncannily presented as a TV show, where you play through a string of episodes featuring various event types, including standard races and elimination-style events. As you progress, brand-new events open up, and they sure bring the missile-blasting excitement along with them. Once you’ve completed the main rung of events, you can compete in the series finale and will have to place in the top 3 in order to advance to the next episode. You can unlock bonus events after wrecking a required amount of adversaries within the current series you’re competing in.

Among the new events you can unlock, there’s Air Strike, where you dodge missiles and wrack up combos to obtain high scores; Detonation events, which are essentially time trials, but the twist is you’re constantly bombarded with Power Plays to dodge en route to the finish line; Survivor features lorries that you need to pass whilst maintaining caution because otherwise your car will be blown to bits because these rigs chuck out blue and red explosive barrels from their rear ends; and then there’s Air Revenge, which has you taking revenge on those helicopters that keep victimizing you with their missile-led onslaughts, so you can build up power-plays and return the favour to them. 

A Power Play Trip

Power plays were an exciting and distinctive selling point for Split/Second.

 The unique incendiary techniques Split/Second brings to the racing game table are known as Power Plays; these are devastating environmental events triggered by the player, where, with a press of a button, you can trigger cataclysmic events on the race track that’ll obliterate the competition in front of you, allowing you swoop ahead and into first place. Think of Power Plays as having a special red button you can use to cause wholesale carnage, only instead of a button, you’ve got three bars to fill up by drifting, gaining air, or drafting opponents.

There are two types of power plays; one is quite simply named a Power Play, where you build up a blue meter until it resembles a bar, then when an icon on track indicates another racer is in your vicinity, you can jam that face button and send one of numerous destructive hazards their way. These can be rolling buses engulfed in flames, huge wrecking balls, massive building explosions that send debris flying out over the track, or an awaiting helicopter dropping a detonation charge from above. Occasionally, you can trigger these primary Power Plays to force garage doors to open or bridges to lift, creating bespoke shortcuts to help you leapfrog the competition.

The secondary type of Power Play is known as a Route Changer, meaning the Power Play you’ve triggered is so seismic and calamitous that it changes the route of the circuit. This usually involves driving cautiously through flaming narrow passageways and over collapsed structures that act as dangerous platforms to keep you on your wheels. Route Changers are pure explosive spine-tingling spectacles that’ll make you pine for a Split/Second remaster because they’re incredible sights to behold.

The Fast And The Glorious

Drifting charges up your Power Play meter so you can unleash havoc upon your rivals.

Split/Second’s vehicle selection runs an array of super speedy automotives that’ll blast into the lead with ease and almighty pick-up trucks capable of withstanding hellacious blowbacks from the combustible buildings and structures surrounding you. The car selections in Split/Second were made for exciting bumper-to-bumper racing. Moreover, each ride is thrilling to drive, managing to feel distinct with various attributes and subtle handling differences.

The vehicles in Split/Second aren’t licensed constructions; the car list instead features a set of racers and pick-up trucks with made-up names such as Ryback, Cobretti, and Hanzo. The absence of licensed vehicles is hardly a bad thing, though, as that allows the vehicles to be wrecked up into crushed heaps of metal without any leniency or surcease required.

Cars feel excellent to drive and are super-fast as well, matching the intensity and ferociousness of each and every race. As much today as back in 2010, Split/Second runs excellently, managing to capture the wild and untamed nature of a pack of four-wheeled hunters primed on eviscerating each other with targeted Power Plays.  

A Spectacular Split/Second

Night races are few, but seeing the red/orange devastation lights up the sky.

The fact that Split/Second was released in 2010 on two-generation old hardware is mind-boggling. The absolute scale and sheer awesomeness of the destruction you can create and witness is incredible. Split/Second is quite simply the racing game genre’s answer to disaster movies, only this time, you’re in control of the devastation, and indeed, it’s all man-made.  

It’s a shame that Blackrock Studio folded because there was plenty of potential for Split/Second to get bigger and better with future sequels. The foundations presented to us through the TV show presentation, the various Power Plays, and the host of event types demonstrate that more certainly could’ve been squeezed out of this hidden diamond. Alas, much like a land-leveling bomb, Split/Second made an earth-rattling impact on those who played it, but those outside of the blast radius didn’t feel the ground move in its wake, and thus Split/Second didn’t gain the kind of following it certainly deserved.