A few years back in the heady days of the first PlayStation, several of my friends and I would sit down, plug in the multi-tap and have a good old fashioned game frenzy. One of our favorites was ‘Circuit Breakers’ where you raced your friends in a death match to see which one of you was the better racer amidst all of the obstacles and the other racers who were desperately trying to run you off the track. ‘BlazeRush’, a new arcade style racer, has recaptured the glory days of ‘Circuit Breakers’, or whichever game you were equally obsessed with, and brought a fun and rather addictive entry to the genre.
In the single player mode, you are tasked with completing races and finishing challenges in order to earn stars to move forward and progress through the various cups. The racing style is just as off the wall as you’d expect. A straight forward racing style, you have no brakes as you race ahead, so your two biggest tasks are collecting pickups and staying on the track. The pickups differ from track to track but vary mostly between speed boosters to make that last second pass for the win and a variety of weapons to pulverize your opponents with. As you move through the different stages, the racetracks will also begin to throw curve balls at you like a giant spiked bulldozer that chases you around each lap, let’s say. With the added difficulty of track variations, you have to choose the proper car to deal with whatever they will throw at you. Each character that you can choose from has their own unique vehicles that have its own strengths. Some are better at cornering which is good for the levels with no rails, while others are much faster which is good for the levels where you need those extra bursts to get away from a maniacal killing machine coming after you. You have different ways to play as well. There’s the cup option I spoke of above, there’s a time trial option and a survival mode. Each of these options are also available online as well where you can play a LAN game with your friends or you can play online in the case you don’t have friends or they aren’t into having racing fun like you are. The challenges these different modes offer will take their own time to master, so you will always have to be augmenting your style in order to stay in the race long enough to earn at least one star and move on to the next round which gives a surprising level of depth to the game.
Graphically, the game looks pretty good even if it’s not exactly an eye popper. The graphics don’t need to be amazing for the style of game it is but it was pleasantly nice to look at. The backgrounds are well made and there are several different maps that you can race on that all look fairly good. As well, the music is very much a throwback to the games ‘BlazeRush’ emulates as you’ll find yourself bobbing along to songs as you desperately try to hold on to first. Thankfully, the music isn’t overly loud or overbearing instead giving you more background racing music as opposed to in your face volume that I’d normally have to turn down.
‘BlazeRush’ does have its drawbacks. While the controls are purposefully almost oversensitive in order to add the frenetic pace of the game, mastering the turns was an ordeal as opposed to being a fun part of the learning curve. Even the tank style vehicles designed for tight turning still overturned far too easily setting you back a few places or, in the survival modes, killing you. This made the game more frustrating than not for the most part. Also, even with the varying drops and choice of maps, it often felt repetitious. While it does have a lot of replay value as you try your best to master the tracks, the amount of time you can get out of a single sit down can be limited.
Overall, ‘BlazeRush’ is a game that uses the power of nostalgia to craft a fun and addictive, if not somewhat frustrating, arcade style racer. Drawing on a variety of games for inspiration, there will be something that everyone will be drawn to in the game as the frenetic pace and varieties of maps keep the game fun. While it can be a difficult to master and a tad repetitious, it will ultimately give you plenty of entertainment value that will make you remember why you love(d) these games.
***This game was reviewed on PC and a copy was provided by the Publisher***
