SKIDMARKS IN YOUR BLAZER
Also for: Android, Linux, Macintosh, Nintendo Switch, Oculus Go,
Playstation 4, Tomahawk F1, Windows
Screenshots of BlazeRush immediately piqued my interest by
invoking the spirit of isometric arcade racers of the 1980:s and -90:s. I had
a blast perfecting curve techniques in games like Skidmarks and
Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road (how about them titles?) for
the Amiga, and people seem to remember Rock N' Roll Racing for the
SNES fondly.
But in this futuristic, post-apocalyptic racer, from Russian developer
Targem Games, chaos is the name of the game. The concept of perfecting
your driving skills almost plays second fiddle to fighting your way to the
top. Weapons and turbo-boosters warp in all over the screen, making it more
like a battle zone than a racing track. The controls are slick and intuitive,
utilizing only two buttons - fire and turbo - and one stick for direct
control. But what good does that do when all the blazes and explosions make it
hard to tell what's going on?
Apparently designed around the notion of multiplayer fun, the camera displays
a very narrow and intrusive field of view, punishing skillful players and
helping poorer ones. A strict rubberband mechanic prevents anyone from getting
too far ahead. If anyone is about to fall behind they get beamed back into
view. Also, anyone in the lead will have a hard time reacting to hazards in
time, since the camera centers on the track behind them.
But this philosophy also applies to the single-player campaign, which makes
little sense. No matter how well I memorized the track, no matter how skillful
my driving, some leeching A.I.-opponent would fire a homing missile up my
exhaust pipe on the final stretch, blowing me off the track and demoting me to
last place. I'd eventually adopt that same strategy myself to greater success,
but then it came down to being lucky with weapon- and boost-pickups.
This mechanic makes the "Remain in the lead"-stages suffer the most. A clock
ticks for the driver in the lead. The first one to reach fifty seconds wins.
Here, the problem with fitting five racers on the same screen is the most
prevalent. All the middle-of-the-road camerawork and random pickups makes
these tracks insufferably luck-dependent. Thankfully, you don't have to win
every level - or even play them - to beat the campaign.
Way more fun are the "King of the Hill"-stages, where you compete to become
the last man standing. You try to bump or shoot each others off the road, all
the while being chased by a hulking steamroller with spikes, which accelerates
until it inevitably crushes everyone on the track. These levels also best
bring forth the theme of capitalistic greed that permeates the underlying
"story".
With a constant influx of new weapons, boosters and vehicles with each new
stage, the single-player campaign seems like a constant tutorial, preparing
you for endless multiplayer matches to come. With that in mind, the final boss
fight should test all your acquired skills. Strangely, it doesn't. Instead it
is one of the most lacklustre levels of them all, giving you only two
different weapon drops and a circular track to fend off a big brute.
In the end of this wildly inconsistent playthrough, I can only give BlazeRush
the most lukewarm of recommendations. Frankly, the word "average" doesn't
capture the experience at all - apart from the first couple of levels, I was a
wreck of emotions - but it is the mean average of all things considered. I
appreciate how easy it is to get into, but once there, you don't have to stick
around for long to get the gist of it all. It can be fun way to kill time, but
the emotions get stale awful quick, and the different weapon effects brighten
up your view and die like fireworks.
[Screenshots from MobyGames: www.mobygames.com]
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