Welcome to another It’s Geektime fabulous video game review. Today, we are going to look into a new release that we played on Xbox 360 called Split/Second.

Split/Second is an arcade racing game developed by little known video game developer Black Rock Studio. It was release on May 21^st of this year for the PS3, 360 and PC. Surprisingly enough, at least for me, the game was published by Disney Interactive Studios (since when do they make good games).

In an age of remakes and sequels eating up both the movie and video game markets this game has a fairly original concept, with a very simple premise, drive fast and try not to die. Players take part in a fictional reality TV show on large scale courses designed to be destroyed. There really is nothing to the plot and I am ok with that. It has large scale destruction, and a suitably epic soundtrack. Right from the beginning you are thrown into the action.

The game play is structured like a television show. There are 12 episodes in a season and each episode has different ‘events.’ These range from simple races to running from military attack helicopters. There is also a game mode where you have to pass giant Mac Trucks that are tossing exploding barrels at you.

The environment is more interactive than anything I have seen in a racing game. To give you an idea of its scale, in one board you can explode the track out from under you only to be put on a runway underneath a crashing B-52 bomber. In another board, you explode a giant CN Tower only to race into it and use it as a jump. There is a ton more action just oozing out of every level of the game all resembling this giant action movie scale.

There are some tiny issues centering around the difficulty of some of the boards and the unnerving, unnatural persistence of the computer AI. However, the game is visually stunning and as addictive as any game I have played recently. Every board is epic and the big explosions are GIANT. I’d like to happily give Split/Second a 10 on the It’s Geektime d10 of explosions.