Preview: 'Blur' Multiplayer Beta

Blur was one of the many, many games delayed into 2010 to avoid the cramped holiday release period. The tactic of stepping away from the yearly stampede to retail shelves - as well as avoiding big hitter Modern Warfare 2 - was generally well received by consumers, but it was one that obviously still caused some upset for some waiting on certain games. Bizarre Creations' next arcade racer was one of these delayed titles, and perhaps unsurprisingly, none of that disappointment surrounded it. If anything, a delay was entirely foreseeable.

Why? Well, the project went dark after its summer reveal, and despite some glowing impressions, its appealing ideas didn't carry much weight beyond words. It was something people needed to see it for themselves. Fortunately the six month push has given the studio a chance to hone the project and release a surprisingly robust multiplayer beta, now available as a pre-order incentive. As well as a chance for the studio to test perception and balancing, it finally shows off its biggest selling point: the ability to use power-ups to smash, electrocute and boost your way to first place, all in semi-realistic surroundings.

Calling it Mario Kart for grown ups is lazy but certainly appropriate, especially when it comes to those power-ups. Lined up as regularly as road markings, there are abilities that spit floor-hugging missiles, send off slow burning projectiles that creak around corners, give you massive speed boosts and drop mines that devastate anything that goes near them. They all have names, obviously, but the fact that they're all easily identifiable by coloured symbols and stored on your rear bumper means such formalities aren't a problem. Furthermore, there really isn't anything unique or new about a single one of them, so if you've played any particular mascot-racers in your time, you know exactly how to play.

While that comes across as a negative point, it really isn't: it enables the player to get on with using them, as opposed to learning how to, and using them strategically can give you a significant advantage. You can obviously throw them behind to stop someone gaining that slipstream advantage, and save up to three abilities and despatch them all in the final lap to steal a few last minute places. And since they are so readily available - they instantly respawn as soon as they are collected - to all of the 20 racers on track, every race is a hectic one, and it makes those final few corners unbelievably tense.

And yet undeniably Blur is still a racer. It has all the hallmarks of the Project Gotham Racing series, from the drift mechanic to the authentic cities and licensed cars, and plays like it too. Learning racing lines and how to tackle those hairpins pays dividends, and as well as a plenty of tight turns to master, branching paths yield their different power-ups to find. But unlike Mario Kart, where power-ups are handed out based on position, here learning where the most advantageous power-ups are placed will easily put you in the upper positions. While this lack of rubber-banding could lead to races dominated by the knowledgeable few, fluke wins through lucky pick-ups should be a thing of the past.

While the heavily-touted social networking features have gone under some changes since last year, they still remain one of the game's biggest draws. It's a little ironic that its reward system takes inspiration from Modern Warfare 2, since that was the game that fuelled the post-holiday push: every action, whether it's landing a projectile or cleanly drifting a corner will reward you more 'Fans' (think of the Kudos system of PGR) that draw you closer to rank increases and the many unlockables that go with it. And like the trendsetting shooter, there are challenges to complete across multiple disciplines, and you can equip load-outs tailored to your play style, such as improved collision damage and the ability to absorb shielded attacks as health, making those pick-ups even more decisive.

While it's a system adopted by several first-person shooters recently (BioShock 2 for example) it's something not seen in other genres, and yet it absolutely works. Racing games, especially those leaning on the side of simulation, never maintain bustling online communities due to their hardcore following. Blur, meanwhile, is instantly gratifying and fun to pick up and play, and has more than enough hooks to drag you in. While its online code is a little shaky and power-up balancing difficult to gauge at this stage, the beta certainly makes this one to watch, and could be an interesting competitor to Infinity Ward's online dominance.

Blur is out on May 28 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.