Trailblazers – Video Game Review

Trailblazers is a fresh new co-operative racing title with an innovative on-track game mechanic: paint the track, boost on your colour and work as a team to win!

Take control of high-speed racers in unique 3v3 team races across a series of colourful circuits. Paint the track as you race, capturing key areas to dynamically change the racing line, then boost on your team’s colour to dominate the race!

Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch (later this year)
Developer: Supergonk
Publisher: Rising Star Game

I’ve never been into racing games. I often find them quite repetitive and dull. One of the racing games that I did enjoy, however, was the F-Zero series, probably thanks to the fast paced racing style and unique vehicles. With it having been years since the last F-Zero game, Trailblazers manages to to recapture some of this magic and combines it with the bright, colourful fun of Splatoon.

Trailblazers borrows from the vehicles of F-Zero with the painting dynamic of the Nintendo shooter. Zipping around the twisting tracks whilst laying trails of pain, you have to work with your team mates in order to win, using the pain trails to boost your way to a victory. Your team paint trail lets your vehicle boost, and you can chain these boosts up to even greater speeds, hurtling you around the track at incredible speeds.

The pain mechanic isn’t just a simple boost feature, however, as you can pain over the opposing teams trail in order to give your team a boost whilst denying them one, as well as firing your pain ahead of you to stun enemy racers that might be in the lead. These features give the game a more tactical aspect, as you have to keep an eye on your trails, choose where to pain and where to get rid of the other teams paint, and can even be offensive when need be. Coupled together with some multi-route tracks and races that happen across multiple levels, it makes Trailblazers a racing game that is more tactical than most.

The locations in Trailblazers are brightly coloured and visually impressive. There’s the orange desert location, the bright green jungle world, the blues and purples of the futuristic city; with all of the tracks being bright and distinct from each other.

The design aesthetic of the game isn’t just limited to the tracks, as all of the racers and their vehicles are hugely different. Some ships look like beaten up pick-up trucks, others are sleek and new, and some even look like classic cars turned into sci-fi vehicles. Whilst the vehicles have similarities to many modern and historic cars, the racers are a much more varied bunch, with a cast that includes humans, robot, and aliens. My personal favourite is the little blue frog-man.

Trailblazers is immediately accessible, with the basics covered in just a couple of races, but thanks to the options available through different racers with their own abilities, tactical racing, and multiple vehicles, it’s a game that also has a lot more depth to it; one that can take a lot longer to master.

Thanks to a lengthy story campaign that lets you try out each of the racers, with multiple medals to unlock and a cross-platform multiplayer that allows you to play against real people at any time, Trailblazers is a game with a huge amount of life in it. I’m very much looking forward to its future release on the Switch, as it’s the perfect game to play on the go.