Have you ever watched a trailer for an upcoming game that aligns with your tastes, only to notice a certain something which may harm its potential? Perhaps a racer where the AI appears far too aggressive or even passive, or maybe a modern day shoot’em up where enemy bullets blur into busy backdrops? Blazing Trail’s introduction to the world left me similarly scratching my head. It’s a retro-style isometric military shooter (imagine Jungle Strike, Return Fire, and Viewpoint rolled into one) that isn’t of the twin-stick variety. This left me wondering how aiming, shooting, and manoeuvring will work, while also being concerned about the size of the vehicle’s large hitbox.
True enough, all those things are a point of contention, with issues arising even during the first stage. The only weapon that points upwards is the weak machine gun, useful against soldiers and not much else. The forward launching rockets meanwhile have a very limited range; meaning you’ll be using the long reach laser the most…which is on a very slow recharge. Suffice to say, this isn’t a fast-paced arcade shooter where you’ll be holding the fire button down while dashing through hostile locations, but rather an experience where you must edge forward carefully, lining up shots perfectly with obstacles as they emerge on screen, while sometimes backtracking to lay landmines in the path of enemy vehicles. Often, I had to stop for a few seconds to let the laser recharge fully before moving on. And by ‘a few seconds’ I mean around thirty. This, obviously, slowed the pace to a crawl.
Enter a location with numerous enemies, and you’ll take damage while moving into position to retaliate, meaning everything from guard towers to single soldiers must be taken out from afar. Annoyingly, enemies can fire bullets even if they’re off-screen, so you may trundle along a corridor only to face unavoidable incoming fire. Some areas have proximity landmines too, and by the time they appear, it’s always too late to perform a U-turn. And if a tank or similar collides with your vehicle, you can say goodbye to around half the health bar.
Checkpoints are spread a few minutes apart, restoring health fully, with only the occasional shield power-up to earn in the meantime either by destroying buildings or saving POWs.
It’s during the first auto-scrolling boss battle that the control/aiming scheme is fully exacerbated, requiring you to move in a zig-zag pattern so that laser blasts can be fired diagonally. Tactful? Yes, but also very finicky for the opening boss fight, making for an introduction more frustrating than thrilling. That’s more or less the takeaway: Blazing Trail simply isn’t fun due to the vast amount of frustrations, routinely making you feel like the controls are working against you.
After around an hour of play, dying countless times during the first stage, I thought I must be overlooking something. An upgrade path tucked away, or perhaps the ability to rotate the vehicle’s turrets. I even started a new game to re-watch the tutorial. But no – the vehicle must face the direction you need to shoot, leaving you open from all other angles. The turning circle isn’t huge, and neither is the vehicle slow, but it’s awkward to line up shots nevertheless. A rechargeable shield or more health pick-ups would have made this far more pleasurable.
I put just over five hours into Blazing Trail before writing this review and barely reached the halfway point. Bear in mind that this is an arcade-like shooter; something I’m well-versed in. Not a master of the genre, but very familiar. I can get my head around the fact that it’s heavily memorisation-based, forcing you to learn where enemies are located and where to find power-ups, but this still isn’t something where I was able to get a little further each time. I even tried to blitz through locations, haphazardly avoiding projectiles and enemies, thinking this was how it’s supposed to be played and that I was playing far too cautiously prior, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
It’s difficult to comprehend what has happened here, as in terms of presentation, Blazing Trail appears to have quite a bit of effort poured into it. The music is decent, the sound effects pleasing, and the pixel art is well drawn, complemented by shadows and other effects. It can be played in co-op too, with a handful of bonus ‘duel’ arenas to go head-to-head in. I can only assume that it has succumbed to ‘developer difficulty’ – i.e. the developer became so familiar with their creation that the inane difficulty level was no longer visible – or that the original PC version had a keyboard/mouse control scheme that hasn’t translated well to a joypad. What a head scratcher.
Gamenergy studio’s Blazing Trail is out 30th April on consoles. Published by eastasiasoft. The PC version launched earlier this year.