Atv Offroad Fury: Blazin’ Trails
Author: Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine

Blazin’ Trails is a perfect example of the hazards of doing a direct port of a PS2 game on PSP. Sure, it’s packed with all the content of Offroad Fury 3—and then some. The problem is that Offroad Fury has always been a game of finesse: Control and timing are everything, especially with regard to “preloading” your jumps, a feat accomplished on PS2 with a quick back-and-forward motion of the analog stick. Without preloading, you completely lose the rhythm of jumps, finding yourself trundling up a hill while everyone else floats effortlessly over you.

And it’s heartbreakingly difficult to do on PSP. The back-and-forward motion must be so quick that you’re basically forced to use the analog nub. But, like many other early PSP games, Blazin’ Trails fails to take into account the hypersensitivity of the nub. The result is that you can preload to your heart’s content…but if you land just a little bit off, you’re done for—you’ll overcorrect for sure and go flying off the track.

The alternative is to use the D-pad, but if there’s a reliable way to preload jumps with the D-pad, I haven’t found it. So neither control scheme feels at all satisfactory, and of course you can’t customize them. It would have been fine if Climax had made the game just a bit more forgiving, but the racing is still every bit as demanding as the game’s PS2 predecessors.