'Blur' Fuels Up For May 25th Release Date

Activision gave E3 a preview of Bizarre Creations' new action/racing title "Blur" last year, and the game subsequently experienced delays that pushed its release into 2010 last September. Those extra months of retooling are about to end, however, as a multiplayer beta test has been launched with the full game's final street date set for May 25th on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

"We are going to launch on May 25th in the U.S. -- May 28th in the U.K.," Activision's U.S. PR manager for "Blur" Paul Murphy revealed at a media event in Liverpool, England.

Known for their work on the "Project Gotham" and "Geometry Wars" series, Bizarre visibly applied their racing experience from the first with the color and effects of the latter in a demo that was made available.

"What we wanted to do was make a racing experience where there was loads of overtaking, loads of packed racing, loads of battling cars and action," lead designer Gareth Wilson told MTV News after the presentation.

Among those features are more than 50 cars ranging from vintage Volkswagen Beetles to modern Ford Focuses, Shelby Mustangs and Lotuses. Bizarre packed the tracks in "Blur" in an effort to keep gameplay fast and combative.

"The first thing was to put 20 cars on the track instead of eight," Wilson explained. "The other thing we looked at was power-ups. Each of the power-ups is designed to be useful to attack the next person in front of you depending on where they are."

The result resembles "Mario Kart" racing with vehicles off your local dealership's lot and neon-tinted blasts and sounds borrowed from "Iron Man" set in recognizable cities around the world. Stay tuned to Multiplayer as I role out more details on the gameplay and unique online play as revealed by the "Blur" lead designers themselves.

Do you think "Blur" will make waves in the racing genre when it launches this May? What do you want to know about the game before you consider picking it up? Sound off in the comment section below.