Trailblazers Reviews
Trailblazers has plenty of charm and style with its gimmick of painting your way to victory, but it barely crosses the finish line thanks to its uneven AI, sloppy handling and lackluster multiplayer.
Trailblazers isn't a bad racing title. Despite some floaty controls, the actual racing is fine, and the painting and team mechanics are interesting. The modes are also good, but the lack of a community means that local multiplayer is your only other option once you consume all of the single-player stuff. You'll wish the developers did something more interesting with the concept, as it feels untapped. For that, Trailblazers is only recommended for those who have already checked out other racing titles first.
Taking what made Splatoon so popular and combining it with level design of F-Zero makes it sound like a dream, but it, unfortunately, misses the mark. With a bit of AI tweaking and varied weapons, this could be a much better experience. For now the splash of colour won't hold your interest.
"On the right track, but it's missing players and technical polish."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
Trailblazers incorporates some fun ideas, like painting the road to create boost strips, but fails to deliver in the controls department. It’s worth considering if you’re looking for something else that isn’t Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – but it’s nowhere near as fun.
With a community of people playing the game as intended I think Trailblazers could have had potential to be quite interesting. If you’re able to play with friends you can begin to see what the goals were and it is at least a different way to race. Unfortunately, as a single-player experience it is hard to feel the teamwork vibe working with bots and that makes for a pretty bland driving experience. Despite looking great and having a cool soundtrack there’s no escaping the somewhat ho-hum results in a typical race in Trailblazers.
A variable frame rate is an out and out killer for any racing game, and despite Trailblazers' clear potential it's impossible to see past that. The overall concept, of merging F-Zero and Splatoon, is a fantastic idea, but perhaps it needed a bit longer in development in order for it to be fully realised.
Trailblazers isn't a bad game at all, it just doesn't do anything to make me ever want to go back to it. The multiplayer portion of the game does not have enough players to get into matches consistently (or ever, in my case) leaving the lacklustre single player content. There's also the local multiplayer but, just like the single-player content, you and your friends will get bored relatively quickly. To top everything off, the price of the game is far too high for what you are getting, making it difficult to convince anyone you know to pick it up.
A colourful cartoon racer that lifts some of Nintendo's big ideas, but not its attention to detail.
Trailblazers is a compilation of gorgeous race tracks with not a lot to do on them. If a sequel ever manages to come about, it’s easy to imagine a version of Trailblazers with better combat, a wider variety of ways to take advantage of painting the track, and more changes/tweaks besides, but until then this is a wasted opportunity on Supergonk’s part. Trailblazers can be fun, but it’s fleeting.