If we really set our minds to it, we’re sure we could come up with some kind of humorous punch line to that question, but thanks to Blackrock Studio having visited our office mere moments ago with the latest build of Split/Second, we don’t have to – the answer is in the title. For those of you not entirely up to date with the Pure developer’s latest entry into the racing genre, you can get some additional background by checking out our hands-on at E3. For those with clicking deficiencies, however, allow us to briefly outline the concept.

Split/Second is based around the notion of a fantasy TV show. One in which each track environment it littered with explosive pyrotechnics and destructive mayhem. Partakers in the running will board their futuristic muscle car and bid for first place as in a traditional racer. Unlike Burnout, say, in which boost is awarded for impressive driving skill, a substance we’re lovingly calling Powerplay Juice (sorry Blackrock) is instead milked from your skill and spilled onto the track.

Each circuit has numerous points at which Powerplays may be used, each with its own unique explosive effect. The player can trigger these to take out leading opponents, open new routes and shortcuts to gain advantage or simply to tear the world apart for shits and giggles. Blue Powerplays occupy the first two of three sectors which, like the rest of your HUD are cleverly integrated into the rear end of your motor. Triggering one of these will cause any of a variety of roadside explosive effects, timed to take out your nearest opponents, or open up a short, but non-track-altering shortcut. A red Powerplay becomes available at the filling of all three segments with delicious Powerplay juice; at this point it’s anyone’s guess as to the manner and scale of carnage you may create. All you can count on is that it’s going to be good and that possibly, it may irrevocable alter the entire layout of the track.

Track knowledge is pretty important. We found the more we played of the airport level, the more we were able to manipulate things to our advantage, recovering ourselves from a sorry seventh place to a respectable first, albeit by a bumper’s width.

But it wasn’t the E3 build that Blackrock’s game director Nick Baynes brought down for us to see today. A brand new level – brand new to us that is, since Nick let slip that the studio has been working on the game since a year before Pure even shipped – the docks, blew us further away than we had previously been blown. That sounds a bit rude, but we don’t care, we’re still buzzing from the gorgeous incendiary racing experience we’ve just witnessed.

The docks, as the name suggests, involved hurtling at ludicrous velocity around the dry docks and shipping cranes of a familiar industrial landscape. Powerplays appeared to build on the already solid foundations of the airport with dry-docked ships bursting open in a wall of flame allowing the race to continue through their hull and cranes tipping domino-style into the floating dock, tilting it diagonally for some gravity-defying banked corners.

 “We really want to get across that each track is not simply more of the same, but also that it builds on everything you’ve seen up to this point” Baynes summised “And then exceeds expectation. That each is completely unique and offers gameplay that none of the others do”.

… continued