Split/Second: The racing game for people who hate racing games

I've never been racing game fan. I don't give a shit about cars, I don't get excited about torque or RPMs or Schumachers or anything that racing people like. In fact, the last racing game I bought was a little title called Mario Kart 64. I loved it precisely because of its lack of resemblance to real racing. While many preferred to spend their days perfecting their cornering whilst eliminating oversteer on Gran Turismo or marvelling at the realistic traction control on Forza Motorsport, I was happily puttering along in my little kart with a mushroom on my head and a song in my heart. And that's about where my relationship with racing games ends.

Split/Second, from Black Rock Studio and notorious-petrolheads-on-weekends Disney Interactive, seems a little different from the racing games to which I've been paying no attention since 1997. While the look of the game lies firmly in the Burnout/Need For Speed arena, the developers are clearly hoping to hark back to the thrill of cracking your opponent up the arse with a green shell to pip them to the post on Rainbow Road.

So, let's start at the starting line. Split/Second slams the player into an obscenely wasteful reality TV race show that pits speedsters against one another on custom-built tracks littered with various structures rigged to explode and smash the racers to bits.

I know what you're thinking - classic Disney, right? It's a ridiculous setting that nevertheless feels like a breath of fresh air after all the Fast & Furious-influenced street racing fetishism that was always such a turnoff for anyone who isn't a spazzy 15 year-old.

The game's central mechanic rests on building up a 'Powerplay' meter by doing wicked drivey things (one of which is apparently called 'slipstreaming', which sounds just filthy) and then unleashing various nasty surprises on your opponents to get the edge. And by nasty surprises, I mean flaming cars spinning into their path, wayward cranes, crashing planes and runaway oil tankers. Yes, this is a game that thinks big, as this video aptly demonstrates. The explosions are some of the prettiest seen in a videogame yet, and there's more to them than simply murdering the competition. Players can also use strategic explosions to open up shortcuts and even entirely new course routes, ensuring that every track will offer plenty of replay value as you discover all of a stage's various tangled, smoking permutations.

There have been murmurs of framerate issues, a death knell for racing games, but there's still a couple of months before release to tune up. Split/Second is set to hit stores at the beginning of May, and if all turns out well, I may be spending the summer speeding down exploding runways rather than shooting mercenaries or casting spells on goblins. Then again, now that I've just re-read that last sentence, let's not count our chickens.