Bayrunner.com BLOG

Developer Bizarre Creations has made some terrific racing games. Take PGR, for example. Great game. Bizarre knows racing games. It also knows something else. According to Bizarre’s Ben Ward:

I’m not going to mention numbers but not really, with the exception of Mario Kart, which has done very well because it’s a Mario Kart game. That is the exception rather than the rule. But generally titles, I won’t name any names, more recent titles that were really good, critically acclaimed and we all played them, they didn’t sell as well as can be expected. I know sales is one thing, but sales are reflective of people who are interested in the concept and interested in what they want to play. So if it’s not selling then the developers are doing something wrong and pushing it in the wrong area. We totally rebooted with Blur. All of these things we think are wrong; we’re trying to fix them.

The people sure love their Mario Kart. Shame they don’t love other racing games as much. Upcoming racer Blur is Bizarre’s bet that it can put out a racing title that does well with critics and retail. We shall see.

Blur Interview [VideoGamer]

When Activision purchased Bizarre Creations, all eyes were on the former Project Gotham Racing developer was going to do next.

While it’s no surprise that Bizarre is sticking to racing games, you may be surprised what direction they’re taking the genre in.

What Is It?
Bizarre Creations’ 2009 arcade racer will be the first game published from the developer by Activision. Developers say they took all of the things that are fun about racing titles and put them into their highly stylized, vehicular combat game. The development team say the game is like Project Gotham Racing, but with all of the elements they like Mario Kart.

What We Saw
I ran two races on two courses of the game in single player

How Far Along Is It?
I played a pre-alpha build of the game.

What Needs Improvement?
Damage Modeling: The damage modeling for the vehicles doesn’t really match the aesthetic for the rest of the game. It needs to be in there, but maybe there’s another way to present damage.

Courses: The game comes with a ton of courses, but both of the ones I raced on were ovals. I’m sure there will be plenty of non-oval tracks, but since I haven’t seen them yet it’s worth pointing out that there really needs to be.

What Should Stay The Same?
New Look: When I saw the game last month it looked pretty bland. I liked the ideas behind the game, and I liked the pedigree of the developers, but visually there was very little for the game.

Since then the team has been hard at work trying to fix that problem. They added filters to make the game pop, giving the game a bit more sizzle. They also shifted the away from daylight runs. Now drivers race only at night, dusk and dawn. Finally, they’ve added a bunch of light effects and lights to highlight the dark settings. The result is like racing in a disco… in a good way.

Weapons: Lately, I’ve lost interest in the racers that lean more toward simulation over, well, over fun. Bizarre Creations gets that and decided the best way to win these gamers back is to add weapons and shields, essentially making the game a more realistic Mario Kart.

When I played the game there were about five weapons available, one that knocked cars aside, pushed them out of your way, stunned them and blew them up with mines. The team said they’ll be adding three more or so down the line., but no blue shells.You can hold three weapons at a time and, after you pick them up, you can cycle through them to decide what order to use them in.

Shields: Because they didn’t want the weapons to overpower the racing element of the game, Bizarre Creations also added rechargeable shields. Right before getting hit with a weapon the car sounds an alarm giving you a second or so to activate a shield.

You start with four shields. Once you use them you get earn more by attacking other players.

Projected Light Graffiti: The game’s user interface is mostly displayed in lights either projected onto the screen, forming a lit heads-up display, or with projected light graffiti. The real world technique applies digital graffiti to buildings until the lights are turned off.

Final Thoughts
Blur’s weakest link were it’s bland visuals. The new look of the game goes a long way toward solving the problem. At issue now is whether Blur can stand out in an increasingly crowded field of arcade-like racers with a twist.

Blur, the upcoming combat racer from Bizarre Creations, features licensed automobiles. How’d the Project Gotham Racing developer snag them?

According to Bizarre, it’s choice of vehicles helped — meaning, there aren’t Ferraris or Lamborghinis. “If someone doesn’t want to do what we want to do then we just won’t put it in the game,” says Bizarre Creations’ Gareth Wilson. “There have been a couple of big manufacturers, can’t tell you who, that have gone you can’t set the cars on fire, and we’ve gone, OK we won’t use your cars then.”

This flexible take-it-or-leave-it approach seems to have given Bizarre more confidence at the bargaining table. “Also other games have kicked the door down for us as well, like GRID and DiRT,” he added. “We had one thing with a manufacturer where they didn’t want smoke coming out of the car, and we just said yeah but you’re in GRID, and GRID does smoke. And they went, oh yeah.”

Future ground that Bizarre hopes is broken: Flames coming out of a licensed car while moving. After that? Explosions!

Bizarre Creations’ Gareth Wilson Interview [Eurogamer]

Bizarre Creations‘ Blur is “completely focused on making racing ‘fun’ again,” according to its creators. You know the details, but do you know what Blur looks like? Well, it looks like this.

For those of us without pockets deep enough to afford a subscription to Edge magazine, Activision has released first screens of the weaponized racer slated for a Fall release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

The team behind Project Gotham Racing hopes “make racing fun again” with Blur, a racer that features photo-realistic car and the ability to blast competitors out of the way with bursts of energy, Bizarre Creations said today.

“We did our homework and saw a huge opportunity to move beyond traditional racers and create a game completely focused on making racing ‘fun’ again,” said Martyn Chudley, Creative Director, Bizarre Creations. “Blur delivers a new style of racing experience for all gamers, regardless of their experience, skill or genre preferences. Everything the player does, both in their cars and with their cars, is a dramatic adrenaline rush; it’s a real blast!”

Blur will feature 20 cars, offline or online, on a track and offensive and defensive attacks set in real-world locations ranging from L.A. and San Francisco to Hackney, UK and Barcelona, Spain. The game also supports four-player split-screen play.

“We know that racing can be fun for everyone, and we are excited to enter this genre with a game that keeps players in the pack and combines fun with intense racing battles,” said Maria Stipp, EVP and GM of Owned Properties, Activision Publishing. “Bizarre Creations is one of the most creative studios in the industry with a rich heritage of top-rated racing games and we are excited to partner with them on Blur, which is set to break the mold of traditional racing games.”

The game will be presented through “Bizarre’s innovative new community-based interface”, according to the press release.

This unique story-driving social network evolves dynamically as players compete in different races, make new friends, rivals and fans, and connect with other racers both in-game and in real life.

Custom Groups will let anyone create multiplayer modes with custom settings. These new modes are then shared through Blur’s “social network” so others can try the modes as well.

Blur is set for a fall release on the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

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Bizarre Creations third-person 2008 shooter from Sega was no blockbuster, so why does it keep coming up in conversation?

I have not been able to escape The Club — a game I thought no one played.

For those who are among that crowd of non-players, all you need to know is that Bizarre Creations this game for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Sega released it two Februarys ago. It was a third-person shooter designed to be played for high scores — with consecutive kills adding to score multipliers like consecutive tricks racked points in a Tony Hawk. Trick shots and the shooting of various hidden signs and icons further boosted scores. The idea was for players to re-play enough so they could make the perfect run through the game’s levels, to play the third-person shooter not for macho gunning glory but for arcade scoring thrills.

For a year I heard almost no one discuss the game, but then…

Rapper Ice-T goes on Jimmy Fallon’s show last month, gives out his Gamertag, I look it up and discovered that he’s been playing… The Club.

I go to a demo for the upcoming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Game, which, on the higher-end consoles allows players to take missions set in a globe-spanning theater of free-range levels. The game is full of scoring opportunities. The producer showing me the game points to icons hidden throughout the level and says they can be shot at for points and score modifiers. It’s like that other game, he says… The Club.

Some time close to these events I play through 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, a game that is a third-person score-based shooter, exactly like… The Club. (Whole lot of good that did it.)

Earlier this week, we cover the Edge cover story about Bizarre’s next project, Blur, which we notice is a racing game constantly being compared to a shooter. A commenter notes that that is the inverse of the hype for Bizarre’s last original game, which was sometimes described as a shooter influenced by a racing game. That game was… The Club.

When the chapter for this console generation is written in the history books, it will surely include the obligatory sidebar that notes that heavyweight Gears of War owes much of its cover-mechanics innovation to the unsung Kill.Switch.

If recent rampant references to another game are any indication, there may be a second sidebar for another unsung innovator… The Club.

Bizarre Creations, the development team behind the renowned Project Gotham Racing series, used to make games for Microsoft. Now, they make games for Activision. Why the split?

Speaking with Edge, the studio’s creative director Martyn Chudley has told of Bizarre’s final weeks with Microsoft, as development on Project Gotham Racing 4 (which I maintain is the best racing game of this generation) was being wound up.

I’m not going to slag [Microsoft] off in an evil way, but obviously we worked on PGR4 for them, and I think that PGR4 was the strongest Gotham game we did – the most fully rounded. But towards the end of that project they wanted us to bring it in early, to chop six weeks off development. But the way we work is really right up to the wire, so basically the game is nowhere near finished at six weeks to go, so we had to dig our heels in and say that our contract said that we’re to bring the game in on this day, and that’s what we were going to do because we cannot compromise the work that the lads have been doing, and the quality of the game.

They didn’t realise how bad a situation it would have been – we needed that extra six weeks, and it got us concerned with the future with Microsoft… We were getting disillusioned with Microsoft and they were getting corporate and cocky as well because of the shift in power between them and Sony.

Perfectly understandable, and stupid of Microsoft to let one of their better studios get away like that. But, uh, why the deal with Activision, of all people? How can the publisher that makes exploitation of a franchise a core business aim be any better?

Interview: Bizarre Creations’ Martyn Chudley [Edge]

Bizarre Creations, the development team behind the renowned Project Gotham Racing series, used to make games for Microsoft. Now, they make games for Activision. Why the split?

Speaking with Edge, the studio’s creative director Martyn Chudley has told of Bizarre’s final weeks with Microsoft, as development on Project Gotham Racing 4 (which I maintain is the best racing game of this generation) was being wound up.

I’m not going to slag [Microsoft] off in an evil way, but obviously we worked on PGR4 for them, and I think that PGR4 was the strongest Gotham game we did – the most fully rounded. But towards the end of that project they wanted us to bring it in early, to chop six weeks off development. But the way we work is really right up to the wire, so basically the game is nowhere near finished at six weeks to go, so we had to dig our heels in and say that our contract said that we’re to bring the game in on this day, and that’s what we were going to do because we cannot compromise the work that the lads have been doing, and the quality of the game.

They didn’t realise how bad a situation it would have been – we needed that extra six weeks, and it got us concerned with the future with Microsoft… We were getting disillusioned with Microsoft and they were getting corporate and cocky as well because of the shift in power between them and Sony.

Perfectly understandable, and stupid of Microsoft to let one of their better studios get away like that. But, uh, why the deal with Activision, of all people? How can the publisher that makes exploitation of a franchise a core business aim be any better?

Interview: Bizarre Creations’ Martyn Chudley [Edge]

It’s a late happy new years from Bizarre, with the release of a 13-minute long track entitled “46860 Choices” going out to all the Geometry Wars fans in the house.

Put together by Chris Chudley of Audio Antics, the track is free, and if you’re wondering why it sounds so familiar, it’s a mix tape consisting of “some of the songs from the entire GW series”. Can’t argue with free!

A Late Happy New Year [Bizarre, via Offworld]