February has Split/Second as a Games With Gold title for the Xbox 360. It is a carracing game that comes with a little bit of a twist. Sports games of any kind never really manage to keep my attention but I’m still going to give my honest opinion on the game.

A key thing that I’ve noticed about this game is that cars go around a track at high speed. This is no different to any other racing game. What is different is the addition of a power bar which fills up as you race, filling up quicker if you can do drifts and jumps. This power bar will fill up in sections and allow you to unleash different levels of destructive devastation on your opponents. They can also do the same to you.

There are 12 episodes which have their own set of races. Races can be a basic race, an elimination race, a bonus race or even an elite race from what I’ve seen so far. The elimination races can be quite intense as the last car is taken out of the race completely every minute so obviously you don’t want to be last.

You do get a choice of car and the opportunity to customise it a little bit which is to be expected in modern gaming. More cars can be unlocked as you progress through the game and do well in races.

Racing games aren’t really my thing so I can’t comment much on how the turning feels or how realistic the cars are because I see things like that as fine in this game, I have no problem with it.

The power bar is what to me makes this stand out against other racing games, giving it a bit more chaos that while staying serious also allows the game to get some Mario Cart style silliness thrown in. It can be both funny and devastating seeing things explode and exploding yourself, especially when the game is so quick to get you back in the race. It’s fun, I just personally can’t play it for long periods of time.

 

The art that I’m using as the featured image was found on the achievements section of the Xbox website. It uses black and white as its main colours, showing an interesting contrast, which possibly symbolises the difference between winning and losing. There’s also a little bit of red like the start of an explosion showing a key feature of the game. It tells you what the game is about (cars and racing) is a good piece of artwork, even if a little unclear.