Blur (video game)

"Race like a big boy"

Released in May 2010, Blur is the first racing game from Bizarre Creations since their takeover by Activision in 2007 (and their second overall, following Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2). The best way to describe it is to combine Bizarre's Project Gotham Racing franchise, with the real-life cars and locales, and combine it with the Wacky Racing of Mario Kart. Hilarity Ensues as up to 20 real-life cars at once are engaging in weapons-based combat.

Not to be confused with the Britpop band.


 * Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Blame the bright neon lights.
 * Cap: The fan level maxes out at level 25 in single player, level 50 in multiplayer.
 * Car Fu: How most races end up as.
 * Chekhov's Gunman:
 * Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The powerups, so you can tell from a distance what to aim for. Nitro is green, Repair is gold, Shield is white, Shunt is red, Bolt is pink, Mine is orange, Barge is purple, Shock is light blue.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Not as badly as Mario Kart, but it's there on higher difficulty levels.
 * Cool Car: Let's just say most of the class A cars, with special mentions to the Ford GT, Audi R8 and the Ford Transit van powered by a Formula 1 engine.
 * Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Every car has a health bar, and if you lose all your health, you respawn but lose valuable seconds.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Most of the power-ups can be fired in reverse. Including the Nitro Boost, which will act like an airbrake if fired in reverse, where the car suddenly slows to 20 MPH for a moment, then boosts back to normal speed. Expert players will use the reverse Nitro Boost to get around tricky hairpin turns with minimal effort.
 * Do Well, But Not Perfect: Averted: unlike some other racers, it takes more skill than luck to win.
 * Fragile Speedster: Most of the sports cars are like this.
 * Golden Snitch: Also averted: unlike some other racers, the weapon placement is not randomized. Instead, it stays the same lap after lap, so memorizing where the weapon pickups are is the key to winning.)
 * Lethal Joke Character: Each car class has some cars that are viewed by almost all players as completely terrible (notably, the Corvette C3 (Race) in class A, the Audi TT in class C, and the Renault Megane in class D), yet with skilled enough driving and use of the powerups, one can quite handily win a race in any of these vehicles. What someone started out using as a joke becomes their favorite car in the game.
 * Mighty Glacier: All of the off-road vehicles are like this.
 * Nitro Boost: One of the power-ups.
 * "Previously On...": Used to update you on how your friends are doing and how close you are to the next boss.
 * Rubber Band AI: It's not as bad as Mario Kart, thankfully.
 * Shout-Out: Surprisingly, to its biggest rival, Mario Kart. At the end of the round several awards are given out. One of these is for the most Shunt hits called Crimson Carapace followed by a shell icon. May count as a Take That.
 * Spiteful AI: Averted: the AI cars will go after other AI cars as often as they go after you.
 * Take That: The ad campaign mocks Mario Kart and other cutesy Mascot Racers with a Toad Expy named Brock Lee expressing a desire to "race like a big boy".
 * Biting the Hand Humor: Because Activision is doing the new GoldenEye exclusively for Nintendo, Reggie Fils-Aime now sees the commercial as this trope.
 * Vehicular Combat
 * Wacky Racing
 * X Meets Y: As mentioned above, Project Gotham Racing meets Mario Kart.