Video: Blur: A Big Boy Game?
Apparently people have been making some comparisons between Project Gotham's Blur and Mario Kart; except one is cartoony and the other using real builds of cars. Hence this commercial, which tries to highlight that we're dealing with 'big boy' cars.
I suppose a broccoli-headed (is that broccoli? Not entirely sure.) boy wearing a rainbow shirt punching a pink dinosaur in the stomach is big-boyish. I guess? Doesn't Mario do that to the back of Yoshi's head in the games anyway? What the game is trying to play on in terms of masculinity almost turns me off more than make me intrigued in the few seconds of gameplay it does show.
I do like Mario Kart (though not particularly a fan of the Wii release), and I do have an interest in Blur, but I am obviously not the intended audience with this commercial, as it just made me roll my eyes. What are your thoughts? Did it make you chuckle? Scratch your head? Roll your eyes?
VorpalBunny
Posted to Videos on 21 May 2010
· Comments (9)
Other stuff like this: activision, bizarre creations, blur, commercial, ps3, racing, windows, xbox
Racing games? Ugh!
I just don't see the appeal. So monotenous.
Granted some have some interesting quirks, but the realistic ones look so boring to me.
This is coded gay-bashing. A pink dino approaches the broccoli dude to seek out friendship, gets assaulted instead.
I don't think there's a lot of ambiguity here. GLAAD should be all over Project Gotham for this.
I hope that's sarcasm.
As for the ad, it made me chuckle and didn't turn me off one bit. I really enjoyed the Blur beta and I'll probably pick it up sometime after I get tired of ModNation Racers.
That's... really pretty unnecessary. I guess someone pointed out the similarities to kart-racers sometime in late development and someone decided they had to 'differentiate' it somehow XD #I'm reminded of the whole THIS ISN'T YOUR FATHER'S STAR TREK malarky when they were advertising the new Star Trek last year#.
The problem is this is just going to bring a lot of unneeded bad-blood between the fans of both parties, a lot of 'lol Mario-Kart is GHEY' from the 360/PS3 set and even more of OMG FRAT BOIS IS RUINING EVERYTHING crap from the Nintendo set (and most likely a wonderfully narrow-scoped video from the ever-so charming Game Overthinker).
Speaking for myself, I'm getting Blur not because I have some knee-jerk need to defend my 'masculinity'-- and I have lots of fun with Mario Kart-- but because the game is so well made and fun to play. Hell, it's Mario-Kart inspired touches are probably the only thing that really got me interested in the first place since regular 'realistic' racers bore the fuck out of me.
I'm more of a Mario Kart fan (based solely on the N64 and SNES versions) since straight-forward racing sort of bores me but I don't really find the ad too problematic.
I mean there's still the idea that the coded gay rainbow sweater broccoli kid (I'm not sure how that's much like mushroom Toads but mmk) still has an interest in "manly men" testosterone-driven quasi-realistic takes. The dino thing seems to be vaguely sex toy-ish but I don't think it's in any way meant to be gay-baiting. Or bashing?
That said, I'm still not hugely a fan of this trend in ads pushing for hyper-masculinity as sort of a terrified reaction against the supposed androgyny push and/or metrosexuality. I mean the Old Spice "I'm on a Horse" ads (all of their ads for the past couple years really) are fully aware of their goofiness but others are pretty tasteless.
II actually felt a little sad when I saw this. If they think the best way to get people to play their game is violence against people trying to be friendly I'm out, and I own the first GRiD game and actually play it.
I'm always turned off by any commercial that implies that I need their product to "be a real man" or "be a real woman." This just made me raise an eyebrow. The funny thing is, I hadn't heard anything about Blur until now, and I might have been really excited about a Mario Kart-type game with real cars, but this commercial really dampened that excitement for me. I still wanna play it, but I'm really gonna have to put this commercial out of my mind. ~_~
Honestly, the Blur multiplayer beta was so fantastic that this commercial does nothing to impede my need (not want, mind you, but a physical yearning deep in my soul) to play more Blur.
I think that they would have done a lot better to just accept that their game is Mario Kart with real cars, and that ad campaign would do a lot better. Who wouldn't want Mario Kart with better online multiplayer, persistent character progression, and constant challenges to complete peripheral to the actual races? That's what Blur is, and if they just went with that instead of trying to make some artificial kiddy/big boy distinction the whole thing would probably go over better.
Mario Kart Wii is one of my favorite racing games. Part of the appeal is that it is so surreal and has a lot of fun settings like underwater pipes and lava levels.
So I would try blur at an arcade, but I dunno I would spend half as much time with a more serious game.
Whats up with the Mario Kart inspired games all of the sudden. Like Sonic Racing, the Samba the Amigo track was my favorite. Reminded me just a bit of the Rainbow Road.