Think: Burnout Paradise with earthquakes, buildings collapsing and more explosions than a Die Hard movie and you’ve got Split Second Velocity to a tee. It’s fast, furious and completely mental, like a grown up Mario Kart with an eye for beautiful cars and spectacular set pieces.

Split/Second came out last year (2010) but was released simultaneously with a couple of other games that I (foolishly) gave more of my time to. An arcade combat racer it looks a lot like Burnout Paradise’s shallow, but eye-catchingly violent little brother and comes from Black Rock Studio, the makers of the ATV racer Pure, and if that’s not enough of a recommendation then I don’t know what is.

The scenario is that an outrageous televised motorsport event is being held and you get a chance to audition, and the whole game is presented like a TV show, a bit like Motorstorm series on the PS3, only more polished and without the embarrassingly corny and pointless character-led back story. Set in a city built for speed, destruction and extraordinary pyrotechnic events and disasters, Split Second: Velocity is Mario Kart for petrol heads... or dynamite/semtex heads – in fact anyone who thinks that last Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie they saw was just too darned placid.

Dramatic presentation screens and music gives SS:V quite a serious look, but underneath all the explosions and speed it’s an arcade racer with a huge selection of vehicles; some tough, some fragile, some good for drifting, some that are better driven round corners smoothly. By drifting, drafting other vehicles, doing jumps, passing while drifting or jumping or having a “close call” you top up your Power Play gauge; with one segment you can trigger a normal “level 1” Power Play like an short cut, an explosion, a bridge collapse or a crane to sweep its wrecking ball across the track, but if you save up and fill all 3 segments of the gauge you will get a rare opportunity (usually only once per lap depending on the track) to unleash a “level 2”, which could be anything from a train crash to a building collapse or helicopter attack on your opponents-some Level 2s even change the route of the race track. Just about every event is as much about ruthlessly wrecking your rivals as driving smoothly through the corners. The vehicles are a superbly modelled and varied set of fantasy car designs (including some pick-up trucks) and genuinely varied handling characteristics. The basic handling model is solid and, depending on the vehicle, rewards controlled powersliding.

I did however find a real problem with some of SS:V’s races and challenges, mainly because the difficulty level seems to be all over the place. This seems to be mostly down to a disappointing peculiarity in the way the game registers steering inputs; it's much quicker to "twitch" steer around corners (dab the stick repeatedly to acquire the desired line) rather than steer smoothly, almost like it was coded for use with the D-pad, PlayStation Ridge Racer-style. Some of the times in Detonator Challenges in particular seemed completely impossible no matter how well I drove. By chance I tried twitch-steering around the longer corners and Robert was my Auntie’s husband. The cars don't scrub off as much speed as if you drive smoothly around a bend holding the stick for a smooth curve, and this clearly doesn’t make any sense and spoils the game if you’re determined to fill your event list up with Gold emblems because you’re going to have to forget everything you’ve learned from driving games from the last 10 years and learn an old technique. I’d love to know why it's like that (maybe the QA testers all suffer from the DTs?), and it’s a shame they still haven’t released a patch to fix it as this destroyed the Season career game for many players I’ve spoken to.

Another idiosyncrasy of so many arcade racers is, sadly, alive and kicking on SS:V: I often seem to drive impeccably and unleash power plays with great effect only to finish 4th or 5th, and then drive untidily and more due to luck and bad driving by the AI win on another occasion. Just as frequently you’ll feel like you’re driving the wheels off your spectacular-looking GT car only to have a pickup truck or SUV somehow draft by you on the last corner to win. I’d be lying if this sort of silly impossibility didn’t annoy the crap out of me too. This sort of irritation could have course been lessened by giving you something to damage vehicles behind you, but you can’t trigger a Power Play behind you and there aren’t any rearward facing weapons or mines either.

Online there is much more contact, and some of the human racers are way better drivers and much more aggressive than anything you’ll come up against in the career mode. Eighteen months on from the game’s release and the game is still well supported with a mix of both newcomers who picked the game up cheap and faithful and highly talented veterans, so that must say something about its lastability. Interestingly some of the guys I played against ranked #1 and hadn’t completed the Season mode, suggesting that SS:V’s online play is a lot more entertaining and winnable than spiky solo game.

If you see this Split/Second: Velocity for sale and want an arcade blast then you’d really be missing out on something if you didn’t at least try it. I have to say that I think it could have been tested better and polished a bit more but that goes for about 99% of the games released these days. If nothing else it’ll keep you arcade race fans out there busy until Need For Speed: The Run arrives, and I'd be surprised if EA’s surefire monster hit didn’t borrow at least one idea from SS:V. Black Rock have supplied several premium DLC packs that contain an extra track, vehicles packs, unlock packs and race modes, which, along with the game’s stiff difficulty level, ensures the game’s longevity for those who, like me, get addicted to its explosively spectacular brand of arcade racing.