Game:

Split/Second (2010)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 2:11

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5

Split/Second: Velocity gets another making of video, this time examining the game's Power Plays, which can be triggered to destroy strategic pieces of scenery up ahead.

Earning a Power Play is a simple case of filling the bar on your HUD by performing overtake manoeuvres and daring drifts or powerslides. You can then pick the optimum moment and then let rip! Towers topple onto the track, gas stations erupt in flames, trains derail and the asphalt gets tossed up in a shockwave, wrecking any rivals caught in the fallout.

Split Second is an upcoming action-racing video game developed by Black Rock Studio and published by Disney Interactive Studios for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Revealed in March 2009, the game is scheduled to be released on May 18, and May 21 2010, in North America and Europe. The game's main gameplay mechanic is the use of destructive environments and special actions.

In Split Second, players take part in a fictional reality TV programme where participants race for money and glory. Throughout a race, players can build up their "powerplay" meter by performing stunts such as jumps and precision driving such as passing very close to objects and drifting. As the player builds up their meter, special events can be triggered which create obstacles for other players, create shortcuts or alter the race course entirely. These triggers are also activated by the player's AI opponents.

Such events include explosions, airplane crashes and building collapses. The severity of the events available to trigger varies depending on how full the player's meter is. The first level of events are available when two of the three bars on the HUD are full and the most extreme can only be triggered once all three are full. Event locations, and the vehicles they will affect, are highlighted with a blue glow and the player must time the action accurately in order to hinder his or her competitors as much as possible. As the powerplay meter resets once an event is triggered, the player must also strategise to choose whether to activate the less destrutive first-level events as soon as they are available, or save their powerplay points for longer and build them up further in order to use the top-tier actions. There are also certain powerplays that reset for the next lap, such as bombs dropped from helicopters, but there will also be powerplays that will never reset, unless the race is restarted or quit. Black Rock Studios also wanted to make the HUD as simple as possible by taking away all the unnecessary elements (speedometer, map, etc.) leaving only the lap count, position that the player is in and the powerplay meter, all dynamically positioned behind the car itself.

Using the reality TV show premise, the game is broken up into numerous seasons with 24 episodes each, with one episode consisting of three race events. The game has been confirmed to have multiplayer, online and offline.

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