Gentlemen start your engines!

E3 was a chance for me to get my game on, and what better time to run around getting hands on time with the next batch of racers? I was able to try out the majority of the big titles despite Gran Turismo 5 evading my radar.

So first up in the arcade corner we have Blur, this game won best of E3 in the racing category. Brought to you by Bizarre Creations (the developers of Project Gotham Racing, Metropolis Street Racer and Geometry Wars) you'll be able to expect high quality. The game features up to twenty cars racing simultaneously, either online against other racing aficionados, or offline against computer generated racers.

There is of course a four player split screen mode and a player-generated multiplayer mode, which allows players to customize the specifications of the race and make it available online. Blur is about providing a fast paced, high action game where the racer is focused on taking out the competition, collecting power-ups, finding shortcuts and pulling off jumps and drifts.

The real strength of Blur is in the visuals. Quality is certainly a factor, down to the most painstakingly modelled effects. Environments included off-the-beaten-track scenes, like condemned buildings and grimy back alleys. The look complements that "dirty street racer" feel, but don’t forget the neon, and lots of it! All the tracks are models of real world settings, spliced together in some instances. The attacks were rather awesome, like the targeted EMP pulse, barge and thrust. Once I figured out I was using the wrong button to deploy these, things were a lot easier. They’ve also included damage effects, and while it looked cool (even when I was on fire at one point), the damage didn’t seem to affect the car handling so much. The game looks set to be a decent addition to the arcade racer library, plus it had a load of community online play, which seems to be the in-thing for car games in recent years.

Blur offers players the ability to challenge each other and actually dictate the game’s story mode narrative through its online component.

Like Blur, Forza Motorsport 3 seemed to emphasize internet play. After Microsoft’s press conference I was a little worried they’d forgotten about the spirit of the serious racer in favour of creating a "paint your own car and share it with others" title. Imagine my delight when I got behind the wheel to discover that Forza is still the technical street-racer filled with all the exotic cars we’ve come to love. The developers have ramped up the car selection however, with up to 450 cars available from 50 different manufacturers on a two disk set, where do I start! There will also be 100 tracks on offer, which are not real world models, but specially designed to be challenging and exciting.

I’m still undecided if they’ve managed to nerf this game a little with the option of turning on “auto braking” so you can really just focus on hitting that apex, and the “rewind feature” which can reset you to any point in the race to redo from there. On the other hand Forza is a technical racer, so these features designed to make the game more accessible may not be so bad. You can always just play without them. Forza 3 is expected to feature drifting, drag racing and oval racing in its gameplay catalogue. The level of detail on the cars and tracks looked amazing. I thought it played just as well as previous iterations, which is a good thing.

Forza has always been a great game if you like racing so if you don’t already own a Forza title, or you just really want more a ton of more cars and tracks this game may be worth a look.

Split Second was the boldest and most unique of all the racing games I played. The premise appears to be pretty weak, having drivers compete against each other in a reality television show. Despite this, the gameplay is engaging, exciting and fresh for an arcade racer. It drove well (in that it was unforgiving going too hot into a corner) but it was not too realistic and unmanageable to pull off jumps and stunts.

Something I found quite common this year was clever placement of the heads up display (HUD), I think we have Dead Space to thank for that. Split Second included an under-car HUD that lets you easily monitor your power meter. The power meter is fuelled by taking the correct lines, smashing into enemies, that sort of thing. Once your power meter is full enough you can use the action button to trigger explosives to take out your competition, or parts of the tracks. I raced around an airport and it was quite intense dodging parts of a wrecked, smouldering plane as they come careening towards you.

Destroying parts of the track to find a shortcut for yourself or send rubble hurtling at your opponent definitely gets the adrenaline pumping. Multilevel tracks are built upon each other in a way to make a track never play the same way twice. Even though the demo I played was just in alpha phase, it looked amazing. It was not quite as photo-realistic as Blur but it really felt like a fresh approach. The use of multilevel tracks that can be blown apart for shortcuts and takedowns is something I’ve not seen before in an arcade racer. The prospect of something a little different to arrive in the car racing scene is certainly a refreshing one. Expected US release is March 2010.

The next instalment of Colin McRae’s off-road rally game DiRT 2 was also on offer. I rather enjoyed the first DiRT. There were some issues I hoped they addressed in this version, namely the handling for all its vehicles that made you feel like you never engaged with the track. In DiRT 2 they have refined the car-handling physics system. Now when I sent my car powering hard into a long wide gravel corner I could feel the effects of the cars acceleration pushing back. They’ve also added a new damage effects engine, and the mechanics of the crash is much more realistic. DiRT was a solid game and perhaps not widely adapted because of its flaws, which seem to be ironed out in DiRT 2.

Another game of notable mention was Mod Nation Racers, which is a next generation, high-definition cartoon racer. The ability to create a track by driving over terrain and customizing any tiny detail in it was a big bonus.

This year’s E3 certainly provided a decent line up of racing games to look forward to. There is still more of the same but some fresh concepts and new techniques applied to freshen up the racer scene a little. I’m really looking forward to Forza 3. I only rented the previous games so a two disk set sounds like the right time to jump in and buy. All of the games seemed to include an online community to share cars, scores and tracks. See you at the leaderboards!

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We haven't forgotten about Need for Speed SHIFT either - check out Mel's video interview with EA here.