From the developers behind the renowned racers such as Pure and the Motor GP series comes another racing game from the minds of Black Box Studios. Black Box Studios have clearly shown their worth to the genre of games, but for Split / Second Velocity, don’t expect any realism here. As you zip around the tracks in the game, they will crumble, brake and explode from beneath your feet, giving one of the most frantic and exhilarating experience any reason can provide. Disney says the game will be fast and a lot of fun, and from what we’ve seen, this should certainly be the case.

As I’ve briefly mentioned, the game’s main premise is the fact that the courses can change throughout your race. Unlike most games where environment changes change the car’s characteristics, Split / Second Velocity has entire buildings and changes in the landscape which will affect your progress through the race. As you play through each of the several tracks in the game, you’ll build up a meter, which can then trigger certain in-game events. The idea of this is to then stop other players from beating you at the finish line and to open up shortcuts. Because of the radical changes to the map each time you activate one of these special powers, no race will be the same.

The amount of power you’ve built up through racing, the more sever the destruction will be. If you build it up all the way, expect to see entire buildings collapse around your car. If you only build it up partially, minor things like airplane crashes and cracks in the ground will alter the race.

The story of the game, from what we hear, will take place as though you’re in a reality TV series. Because of this idea, there will be 72 events across 12 episodes, with different modes available. For example, “Survival” will see you dodging incoming fire from a helicopter’s missiles, whilst another, “Nemesis” has you overtaking trucks in order to gain more time to complete the race.



Black Box Studios are trying to make sure that the player is fully immerged into the gameplay. The HUD screen is very limited, placing a bigger emphasis on the Michael Bay inspired explosions and the sheer excitement of the race. Disney have also confirmed that the game will feature an 8 player online mode with room for 2 players to go head-to-head on the same console.

Here at Baxy-Z, we’re pretty excited about Split / Second Velocity. It’s a great sounding twist on the typical racing formulae and we can’t wait to play the final game. The trailers and hands-on impressions from other people indicate that Split / Second Velocity will be one of the greatest racers of 2010. We’ll let you know what we think of the game with our review next week.

Split / Second Velocity will be out in the UK on May 21st 2010. Latest Headlines