Blazing Trail is an isometric action shooter published by EastAsiaSoft for $12.99. Playing as a tank, it is your job to save hostages, run over enemy soldiers, destroy watch towers, and even shoot down aircrafts through a retro pixel art visual presentation. On paper, it lists the checkboxes you would want for a retro-style action game but unfortunately, the cheap difficulty, repetitive gameplay, and awkward control scheme makes this a poor man’s Ikari Warriors at best.
The biggest issue with this isometric shooter stems from its weapon loadout and how it is assigned to the controller. One face button is the machine gun that exclusively shoots vertically. Then the laser and missile buttons fire where you are pointing but are restricted to a cool down. In other words, the button mashy gameplay would have worked much better using twin stick controls. Some enemies also take way too many hits and the lacking health restoring items means there will be plenty of infuriating restarts.
Compounding the frustration are the cheap difficulty spikes, repeating enemies, and sporadic checkpoint system. Enemies are mostly placed in positions that are not intuitive to the awkward control scheme so you simply cannot attack from an advantageous position. For example, the trucks that charge mindlessly toward your tank can only be attacked if you are pointing face-to-face. But point face-to-face means you cannot escape the attack, causing you to lose most of your health in an instant. Stages are also way too long with not enough checkpoints. If these gauntlets are going to be this long, they need to not use repeating assets. I was done with this game before I could even reach the boss of the first stage.
Blazing Trail is unfortunate because the pixel art is appreciated but it is wasted on gameplay that only causes frustration instead of fun.
SCORE: 3/10
Not As Good As: Cannon Fodder
Also Play: Jackel (NES)
Wait For It: Heavy Weapon (XBLA)
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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