Trailblazer
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PSP
| Trailblazer

Trailblazer is a game about driving very fast and avoiding obstacles, sometimes by jumping over them. The basics are easily grasped.

However, like untying knotted laces or finding a parking space in rush hour, this offering from Ideas Pad takes a simple task and makes it frustratingly difficult, often to the game's detriment.

In Arcade Mode you're given the challenge of speeding along a series of predominantly straight paths as a timer ticks down.

At the start of each race an extra amount of time is added to the clock, so you'll need to set good scores early on to assure you have enough time for the mistakes you'll make on the trickier courses to come. Once the stopwatch hits zero, it's game over, back to the start of the set until you can do them all in one run.

Obstacles come in the form of different coloured paths, jumps, and gaps. These latter two are self explanatory: hit a jump without enough speed or misdirect your craft over a chasm and you'll waste precious seconds as you get reset on the track.

It's the paths that affect play the most though.

Regular track allows you to accelerate and shift from side to side to change lanes. Green and white paths confer different levels of speed boost, while red ones slow you down. Then there's the turquoise sections that reverse your steering, and the dastardly pink bits that force your uni-wheeled ship backwards.

In the fast lane

The action is fast, often approaching WipEout speeds, and the framerate usually manages to keep up. Tearing through each course creates a multi-coloured light show out of the paths: when the tracks become more focused on undulating climbs, dips, and jumps, and when the electronica inspired soundtrack kicks in, Trailblazer can be rather beautiful.

This kineticism comes at a price, though, due to the camera's position being slightly too high and a little too focused on the driver. With less of the track in view, it's difficult at high velocities to see what's coming next, leading to moments where you'll make a mistake, fall off the raceway and feel robbed as that all important time drains away.

Your ship is also very slow to turn and decelerate, further compounding this issue. If you could quickly dash out of the way of an upcoming pitfall - that you haven't seen due to the camera issues - it wouldn't be much of a problem. When you can't, and you add a timer that determines whether you'll have to start the whole sequences of races again, it becomes poor design.

There are even some courses where the designer seems to admit the limitations of the game and its brutal difficulty. Occasionally, Ideas Pad includes an additional lane outside the main track that bypasses every hazard.

When the creator knows a race won't be finished by the average player, that's not hardcore gaming - it's silly design.

Re-run

There's no multiplayer to be found of any sort, though there are additional modes to unlock. Time Trial gives you the chance to go back and achieve quicker times on the Easy, Medium, and Hard races without having to go through the courses back to back, rewarding you with Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum medals.

Endurance sticks every race together in a test of stamina and precision over an extended period of time. On another level it's simply a test of memory, highlighting the final issue Trailblazer has. Success depends less on skill and more on how many times you're prepared to repeat the courses until they're burned into your mind.

In 1986, when the first Trailblazer launched onto home computer screens, this kind of simple, repetition-based play was a useful way of extending the length of a title.

Games have gone beyond the arcade's token-munching mentality, though, and while the title will be a welcome challenge to a select group of dedicated players this new outing does little to entice new ones.

Trailblazer

A punishing test of memorisation that will please fans of the original release with its bountiful amounts of content, but will likely prove too difficult for most players to glean much enjoyment from
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.