What makes S/S: V such an empty-headed treat is the out-and-out ferocity of its presentation and the delirious intensity of the racing. Avoid being reduced to charred wreckage at every turn in order to unlock extra courses, new cars… you know the drill. Big-rig trucks explode, buildings collapse, inexplicable helicopter gunships are deployed.
This blasting is done at one remove, by collecting explosives from the roadside or completing lurid drifts to gain smiting power. There are big, chunky, Tonka Toy-style cars that race at frankly illegal speeds through a selection of venues (an airfield, a city centre, a half-finished hotel complex I'm pretty sure I stayed in once in Egypt) and they try to blast each other off the road. A s cheerfully and knowingly dumb as any film that ever starred Vin Diesel, Split/Second: Velocity is an arcade racer of what used to be called the Old Skool.
