Split/Second is hardly the first game to do what it is promising to do. However, it is certainly the first to do it in this particular way, and in doing so it steps over the charred husks of franchises that moved to greener pastures or never made it off the ground in the first place. You can definitely see the effect of these other games on Split/Second, and this is hardly a bad thing, as it appears to take the best parts of each while discarding the bad.

The most obvious comparison to Split/Second is the long-running Burnout series by Criterion. This series is what put the studio on the map, and for good reason. Before Burnout, crashing and explosions had not been a big part of most racing games. If you crashed, your car was barely damaged and you just kept driving. In Burnout, if you crash, you crash big. Your car gets completely wrecked, you flip through the air, your gas tank explodes, and you come to a stop on the road in a pile of burning wreckage. In some of the games, there's even a guy inside that gets thrown around, leading to some ragdoll hilarity. There are also shortcuts to both get the drop on your opponents (sometimes literally, crushing them in the process) and increase your boost, which lets you keep going fast. This focus on wreckage and smart evaluation of the environment appears to be a key part of Split/Second, and this definitely gets your adrenaline pumping.

Another game with widespread carnage is a lesser-known title by the name of Full Auto. While it certainly had its fair share of issues (like framerate slowdown and balancing), it was pretty fun to take a cannon to a gas station and watch it explode in a massive fireball, consuming everything around it. This scale of destruction appears to be emulated in Split/Second, although in a rather different way. Instead of shooting down pillars or gas stations, you use your boost to trigger an explosion. A small change, but a welcome one, since it keeps your eyes on the road instead of scanning the environment constantly. You want to be in the zone the entire time, otherwise other cars might overtake you in the race for first. The developer has since gone defunct, but Black Rock Studios appears to be carrying the legacy of mayhem along.

The focus on "tricks" - such as drifting, slipstreaming, overtaking, and air time - can trace their lineage straight to Pumpkin Studios' masterpiece known as Project Gotham Racing. At the time, PGR was a huge change from racing games of the day that focused more on maintaining speed and winning races than looking stylish. Sure, Burnout gives you boosts for drifting and such, but it's merely means to an end: winning the race or crashing your opponents. In PGR, earning points through stunts was a major and separate part of the game that had to be weighed alongside the racing aspect. If you did too many stunts, you'd never get anywhere. If you were too focused on the race, you'd never earn any points. It was a trade-off.

While the game is being published by Disney, this is hardly a child's game in the traditional sense. Disney has been continually moving towards removing its label as the "kiddy" studio on the block, and Split/Second appears to be yet another game to prove this. Fast-paced racing and huge explosions, while appealing to kids, are not exactly the sort of thing kids can play with ease, thanks to not having the coordination and muscle memory that comes with age. This game is definitely one different from the traditional view of anything made or published by Disney, but it's not anything different for the developer. They've been doing this sort of thing for years.

Black Rock Studios is not a new name to developing racing games. Many high-profile and successful racing games have come out of the studio, including the ATV series that has treated the Playstation so well and the Xbox-exclusive MotoGP games. The title immediately preceding Split/Second is the well-received Pure, which was both critically and commercially successful. However, Split/Second is also a trip into the unknown, as the developer hasn't made many racing games about cars, and none about the sort of massive destruction that Split/Second is promising. It's to be seen whether or not they can go outside their comfort zone in a seccessful way.