Fierce mix of high speeds and a LOT of explosives!
Michael Bay approoves!

One of the best arcade racing games I had to play and definitely my favorite. Have been playing the game since it's release in 2010. It's like an easy, outgoing friend of yours with whom you can always have fun.

The game is stunning visually, breathtaking action wise and really easy to play. Considering this is a game of 2010 and it feels like something of this year, gives it a lot of credit.
You race through different destructible tracks, blowing up your opponenents via triggered explosions and changing the track altogether. There is almost no HUD to inhibit your perception of shower of visual effects thrown at you. There are many different cars for different tastes and playstyles, each handles and acts differently on the track. Great dynamic soundtrack changing to the pace of action.

The only downside for me is that it does not have official multiplayer support. This game deserves to be on Steam servers. As an alternative you can use Hamachi if you have a group of friends or tune in to Tunngle server room of Split/Second to play with random people (unfortunately cheaters are present there).

Anyways, it's an amazing, breathtaking and fun experience even for solo-play. Just turn up the volume and enjoy the crazy ride!
8.5/10

*Foreword: While this game just recently made its way here, I have been playing for years now, for a couple hundreds of hours at least, so my "hrs on record" is a little off :)

This is an arcade racing game where you have to drift/draft/jump in order to get your bar filled up so you can trigger power plays. Power plays basically trigger explosions in front of you to take out your opponents. (The explosions will harm you as well if you time them poorly.) As this is a racing game, the aim is almost always to cross the finish line first.

Power plays have two levels. Level 1 power plays range from simple explosions (like dropping explosive barrels on your opponents) to blowing up gas stations, planes, etc. With level 2 power plays you can blow up a bridge/dam/ship/road, or making an airplane crash land on the track and so forth. Some Level 2 power plays are also route changers which destroy part of the track thus opening up a whole new (usually faster) section while blocking the old one.

The more I played, the more I realized that this game is all about timing. It really makes a difference when you trigger the various explosions or when you make that explosive barrel to drop. There are also simple power plays, where you open up a door temporarily to take a shortcut. The ones behind you can get a free ride through as long as they are close enough, but once the door closes, the rest of them attempting to get through will crash.
The various cars feel very different. Some of them start to drift easier, some are harder to blow up, some fills up the bar faster, etc. There are a couple of game modes too, but not all of them are playable in multiplayer.

My biggest "problem" with this game is that there are only 11 tracks. But it has a Split/Screen mode which is a rare treat nowadays. I already had countless hours of fun playing with my friends side by side. Not that I would get tired of it any time soon, but honestly, a track editor would make this game ageless.

All in all, it is insanely fun trying to avoid crashing when something just blew up near you sending your car drifting sideways while looking for the perfect moment to trigger a power play in order to beat your opponents to the finish line.

Very fun, action-packed racing game with great graphics and sound...when I was able to get it to launch. I was experiencing one of the rare cases in which Steam wouldn't actually run the game: The "Preparing to Launch" window would pop up and then disappear then pop up again. After some tinkering I was able to get the game to open by decreasing my monitor resolution. I noticed other people were having similar issues. Not sure why this happened but hopefully it can be fixed by a patch.

I still don't understand why is this game so underrated.. you don't have any ideeas what are you missing guys.. once you learn it's mechanics it will become part of you :D

It's a great racer for people who don't want to spend 50 hours very sliiiightly tweaking sliders that don't seem to have any impact on you until you start doing worse. I noticed some people talking about an FPS cap, but it's honestly not noticeable unless you're in a situation that would massively tank your FPS.

I haven't fully finished it, but so far everything is great in it, While some of the tracks don't feel like separate entities (Some even run through other tracks if you hit a lane switcher), they tried to make them feel unique by changing some events that occur.

Also, the AI is evil as an AI with no arms can be. If left to their own devices, two members of the Elite races you MUST complete to advance will easily acquire a 20 second lead.

Split/Second is, hands down, my favorite racing game ever and one of my all-time best games. I bought this game for both the PC and the PS3 even before it came to Steam and I played the hell out of both versions. This is a great game that any racing fan should play at least once and is also a great entry game for those wishing to check out the genre.

The premise of this game is, frankly, not very original but sets up the game nicely. You are a contestant on the new explosive racing show Split/Second. During the course of the "season" you will have to compete in races to advance to the next "episode." Finishing higher in events will get you more points and will allow you to progress further in the season. Each episode is capped off by an Elite Race, a race around the track against Split/Second's best drivers. Beat each episode to win the season championship. Like I said, not very original but it gets the job done.

The gameplay is very simple. You race around a track, drift around the corners and use power-ups to destroy your opponants. However, the center piece of this game is that it doesn't use traditional power-ups like those in Mario Kart or Blur. Instead, you attain energy through drifts, drafts, and air-time. Once you have enough, you can activate power-plays on the track, which usually involve destroying parts of the track to crush your rivals. Filling up your energy all the way will allow you activate the biggest power plays on the track and will also allow you to change the track's route (if the track has a route changer). Racing hard while effectively using your power plays are essential if you want to win the season championship.

In addition to the races, there are also several other types of events. The first one is Elimination. It's similar to the race, but there aren't any set laps. Instead, a there is a timer that counts down. When the timer reaches zero, the last place car is eliminated from the race. Survive all eliminations to win.

The second event is the Air Strike, where a helicopter shoots missles at you and you have to dodge the missle waves in order to gain points. The longer you last, the harder the waves become to dodge. Gain the most points to win the event.

A variant of the Air Strike event is the Air Revenge, which is kind of like a boss fight. Instead of getting points for dodging missles, you get power-play energy in addition to the energy you get from drifts and jumps. You can then use the energy to reflect the missiles back at the helicopter. Down the helicopter in the shortest amount of time to win.

The final event is by far my favorite: Survival. Here, semis are driving around a track while dropping bombs in front of you in order to kill you. As you stay alive and pass these trucks, you gain points. Passing several trucks in a row without dying will increase your score multiplyer. Get the highest score to win the event. I have sunk hours on end trying to beat my own high scores, so I think you'll get alot out of this mode.

On the down side, this game's graphics are pretty standard. It looks okay, but if you're more accustomed to the realistic racing games like Forza then you'll definately notice the difference. There are also some glitches and hitbox issues that, while not game-breaking, can lead to outburts of rage over what the heck just happened. Sometimes, though, the glitches can be entertaining in their own right (like getting killed by an explosion and restarting a hundred feet in the air). These issues, however, are very infrequent and most likely won't dampen you experience.

[EDIT] As for the controls, there isn't a manual shifting option, which I don't mind but some might be a bit miffed that this wasn't included. Also, the initial key set-up is a bit weird. You drive using the arrow keys and use the right control and right shift buttons to activate power plays. I assume this was done so that a second player could use the WASD area of the keyboard when doing split-screen. Thankfully, this is easily remediated since all inputs can be remapped in the Options menu, but it's still a bit jarring when you first start.

So those are the basics of Split/Second. It is very simplistic but very addictive. There's also a bit more to the game than what I mentioned, but I'll leave you to discover those on your own if you wish to pursue this game. Score: 8/10

I'm going to reccomend this game, but with a huge warning,

The PC port SUCKS:
The multiplayer doesn't work,
Gamepad support is there but the on screen prompts still display keyboard,
It censored my online name(Flyingscorpions is offensive but Flyingscorpion isn't?)
Framerate capped to 30
No real graphic update from console editions

Still if you can look past all that, it's still a solid game, gives a nice feeling of adrenaline and enough explosions to make Michael Bay go for the lube.

AI's pretty stupid though, so the lack of multiplayer is a big issue

First things first:
- Steam Trading Cards is available now.
- You may notice the DRM warning about SecuROM. Yes, this game HAS SecuROM, but it doesn't USE SecuROM. Confusing, eh ? From what I gathered, SecuROM was wrapped inside the .exe file and the activation process was automated. There's no limited activation, you can launch the game from Steam and there's no pop-up about SecuROM, so basically, this ♥♥♥♥ can be ignored completely. TL;DR: SecuROM is inactive in this game so you don't have to worry about it.
- Multiplayer is dead, master server was shut down several years ago. However, you can still using Hamachi to play with friends or even play split-screen co-op.
- FPS is capped at 30. I personally don't mind this at all.
- Very limited graphics customization. You can change resolution, v-sync and overall quality. However, the game's well optimized and there's no stuttering or freezing during gameplay.
- Mouse is not usable, just like F1 games.

That was all technical stuffs you need to know. About the game, Split/Second is still a freaking great game as it was 4 years ago.

+ Great graphics, car models look awesome, try switch route and you'll drop your jaw when a freakin' carrier starts collapsing. Cars look bad when they're destroyed though, it feels like their body parts just start detaching rather than being heavily damaged.
+ Racing + Michael Bay explosion. The formula of a ♥♥♥♥ing intense tv series.
+ Great soundtrack.
+ A great variety of game modes. We have classic races, elite races a.k.a mini tournament, airstrike (dodge missiles from helicopter), air revenge (kinda like airstrike but you can deflect missles and troll helicopters), elimination (last car standing)...
+ Simple enough to play, but really tough to master.

- I don't know why the hell they put a limitation on name characters (I tried Masterchiefs but the game showed ************).
- Only two camera angles.
- Infrequent hitbox glitches.
- Weird control, but you can rebind keys later after the tutorial.

With the multiplayer is offically unplayable, I don't think the game's worth $20, but a 50% discount or more would be strongly recommend. Split/Second is fun, enjoyable and unique (well, not that unique but Blur was removed from Steam so I guess there's no other choices right now). If you want an action racing game that's simple but also addictive, then look no further, Split/Second is ready to blow up your monitor.

MICHAEL BAY RACING

If you don't want to read this boring a** review, then I'll say this, it's okay for a PC version, but I would rather have the console version to have a better experince. But the game itself is great if you enjoy a pure arcade expeince. So for the main portion of this game I'll give it a recommend.


After playing this game four years since its release, I've really got my money's worth because of the excitement that this game provides. But first let me say that this will be mostly based on my review on the console (which I played the game mostly on).
Okay so how should I say about this game: Micheal Bay explsions (the good kind!), crazy crashes, on edge races, and drifting everywhere! This game provdies a great orginal arcade experince to the racing genre by using the enviroment as your weapon. Exploding taxi cars to a falling cargo plane, this game provides an on edge experince that puts you on your toes, watching for the enviroment that may crush your chance at winning. There's a great varity of obstacles that you can use to crash your oppenents to gain that first spot position. Even though after a while that you'll immediately remember what objects that will be used by your opponents, the fun factor is about stragatizing your moves, or powerplays. Powerplays are basicly your main mechanic of triggering the enviroment around you to stop your opponents from pulling away. With the blue bars representing the small powerplays that are mostly scattered around the tracks. And you have your red bars which triggers the more drastic or "epic" powerplays which will most likely wreck your opponents. These powerplays are fairly balanced which you can aviod by memorizing their actions when being acitvated. The objects that you can use your powerplay on has a nice unique features based on what enviroment is being raced on.
The tracks in this game are decent to say the best. Some have a good balance of alternative routes, but there are some routes that can completely waste a considerable amount of time, expically with shortcuts. But at the same time with shortcuts (which are used by powerplays), the game is trying to teach you again to stratagize your powerplays bars so that you can be prepared whenever you come across one.
Back to the track design, the tracks in the game can be both fun and fustrating, based on your vehicle of choice and playstyle. Tracks like Downtown or Power Plant can be a bit fun and annoying at the same time because of the tight corners, but can be mastered with throttle control and again the vehicle of choice. Whereas tracks like Dry Docks will rely more of vehicles with higher speed and a bit less corner efficiancy.
The vehicles in the game are decent to say the less in terms of being competitive. I feel that the majority of the cars in the game aren't that useful to drive because of their drifting capabilities. There are some that drifts out really wide and doesn't grip that well with the road and there are those that can grip around corners like it's on rails. But that doesn't goes to say that those that grip that well while drifting are bad. The Goliath and the Titan, which are trucks, are mostly useful for tracks that isn't technical and rely more on straights.
The handling in this game is a bit weird. You can't simply do a smooth turn in a long hander turn of a chicane because of the dramatic loss of speed as compared to the tapping on the analog stick. So wheel users, I wouldn't even bother.... But the pro about the handling is that each car has its own handling characteristic, so every exeprince with a different car would be different than the other, which is great for a arcade game.
Comparing the AI's to the PC port and the console port, it's better in a sense that the AI's are compeitive, but at the same time, the rubberbanding is a bit ridiculous in the PC port which makes it fustrating to get 1st in all races.
How do I think of the PC port as compared to the console overall? Honeslty, it sucks. There's a couple of things that may turn PC players away from this game: One is the frames are capped to 30fps, which to some is immersive breaking, but personally for me I don't really mind that much. Second is the icons for the Xbox controller isn't there......at all. I'm literally shocked to see that Blackrock (which went defunt) or Disney Interactive didn't even add controller support for the PC port. The graphic options isn't there either, just the basic quality options. So if you want to turn off AA or lower the shadows, that AIN'T happenin'. Some of the sounds in this game are muffled, which is weird. From what I've heard, the multiplayer is dead, unless you use a third party software or program. And oh yeah, there's no DLC for this port either, which made me a bit disappointed.
Overally, I'm a bit neutral about this port, the basic's in this game isn't that different with the console port, which I'm glad, but I wish that they gave the PC version more support to make it equally enjoyable.

This race game one of the most impressive race games ever. Lots of destruction , explosions and really nice cars. Also many various type of mission, i like detonator , its looks like time race , but all around you explodes, its really impressive.

One of my three favorite combat racing games (BLUR and Burnout Revenge being the other two). Every bit as good as the console version for X-Box 360 or the cloud-based OnLive service - and with a controller, it plays the same. Highly recommended for a great, entertaining racer.

Note: There is a save-game glitch at the Midway Pass episode. Here's the easiest way to get around it: simply run the races in that episode - and nothing else - to escape the glitch. It's the best way to miss very little from this otherwise excellent collection of races.

High replayability. Intense action. Car racing pure and simple.....that and ridiculously huge explosions that put Michael Bay to shame.

Amazing graphics even the game was release in 2010, explosion everywhere while driving. My most favorite racing game of all time. I think Micheal Bay was behind all this, this game is totally awesome and the car style is awesome! Love the game since I play it.

Great Game but it has it's flaws. I remember playing this on my PSP and loving it, still do but there are problems.

Pros:
1) Lovely graphics
2) Great gameplay
3) Beautiful Backgrounds.

Cons:
1) Weird controls keyboard or controller that need rebinding

Otherwise it's a great game.

Great game! Super fun driving, which is pretty simple. The power play system is just so much fun. So to earn power, you can drift, or draft, or get a close call to an opponents power play, or get air.
I don’t want to really write a lengthy review, because I know most of your guys don’t read them, but if you love arcade racers and want a good on, this is a must.
However the port is not terribly good. For example when using a controller, the keyboard binding still show. And the lack of video setttings.

Just as fun and beautiful as the first time I played it, years ago. Sucks that the servers are down, but ♥♥♥♥ happens. The rest of the game is still completely worth the money. It shouldn't be too difficult for anyone who's looking for a good smash em up racing game. It's explosive, fast paced, and a unique turn from your typical broom broom simulator. The controls for keyboard/mouse are honestly pretty nice, though I still prefer a controller (Which may be an issue for some, I know it was for me. I used to pinnacle to get mine working smoothly). The game itself is fairly large and should keep you entertained for as long as most games do, maybe longer. Graphics wise, looks beautiful even by today's standards. And apparently there's a 30 fps cap? To me, it honestly feels like it's not there, if it truly is to begin with. Awesome game, completely worth your money. Only downside is the lack of official servers.

This is my favortie racing game of all time and i'm happy to have it playable on pc too

if time flies when you're having fun, then it says something that every 1 hour session feels like it has been 3-4 hours.

what isn't necessarily a bad idea is unfortunately crippled by poor execution. locked at 30fps and crashing on resolution change, I searched for a fix for my resolution crash, but I mostly found a large amount of people complaining that the game crashes on start for them. there have been no patches released to fix either of these issues. infact, no patches have been released at all! small gripe, but alt tabbing out also crashes the game.

the AI has a -really- bad case of rubberbanding. they're given cars that are generally a tier above what you're currently given and so you have to use the "powerplay" feature (where you attempt to use the enviornment against the other racers) to try and level the playing field. it's neat, but also annoying when the all-too-common sight of 1-3 cars end up with a 6 second lead ahead of everyone else and your attempts to catch up with them are met with you being ♥♥♥♥ed with by the other racers behind you at every opportunity given to them. if you use a powerplay on someone far away, it'll zoom in to show you their car explode. during this time, you're vulnerable and can't see your car. multiple times now I've destroyed someone and had my car plow into a wall helplessly as the camera zoomed in on someone elses blown up vehicle.

some of the event types really could use some revision, such as the avoiding helicopter missile barrages mode and the time trial mode. a mode where you have to avoid helicopter attacks and get bonuses depending on how long you can continue avoiding missiles is a neat concept, but when you're put on a single lane and the helicopter is firing 4 missiles horizontally across said lane with no way to avoid it, the gamemode quickly loses appeal. one of your 3 lives is gone and your combo is lost because the game gave you no way to avoid what it tossed at you. the time trial mode is brought down by the fact that you have to deal with powerplays being thrown at you during them. it usually gives you either a drifty car or one with poor handling for these events and so getting a good time on them will probably consist of trial and error where you hit a powerplay you couldn't have avoided (unless you knew it was coming, but sometimes it puts you on an entirely new map where you have no way of expecting some of the things it throws at you), exploding, restarting, and seeing how far you get the next time before another powerplay destroys you before your vehicle has a chance to move out of the way.

the sound is depressingly low quality and your graphics options are limited to simply "low", "medium", "high", and "very high" with no way to customize them beyond that. even on very high, it really shows that the game is a ps3 port as the graphics are very much last generation. all these problems with the game are a damn shame because it really is a game that had a lot of potential. instead, it manages to be considerably worse than even ridge racer unbounded, which I was still able to enjoy despite all of its flaws. split/second? not so much. the flaws are too many and shine too bright for me to enjoy it for any real length of time.

the menus are messy and lacking. for example, if you want to look at the new car you got and change its paintjob or even just exit the game after completing an event, that means restarting the race, pausing, and returning to the main menu because there is no option to just return to the main menu after completing an event. admittedly the load times aren't that bad, but it's just absurd to have to go through such steps to do something so basic.

I'd recommend this game for $10 at the -absolute- most. anything above that is really not worth it. it's frustrating, blatantly unfair at times, outdated looking, and generally unpleasant as a racing game. don't expect multiplayer either if that's your thing as the mp servers have been shut down. your only hope of mp is using a third party program to connect to friends over lan. on the bright side, if the bright lights from explosions are highly amusing to you, then this may very well be worth the price to you.

ps: who even puts unskippable cutscenes in a racing game? yeesh.

UPDATE: aaaaand half way into the game, my save is now corrupted. this feels like the most fitting way this could have ended.