TRAIL OUT

My Saturday night crew has a pretty simple test for arcade racers: can four people squeeze onto a couch, pick it up blind, and still be yelling at the TV twenty minutes later? TRAIL OUT passes that test louder than most. Developer GOOD BOYS built a destruction-first racer that cheerfully wears its influences on its sleeve - FlatOut, Burnout, a heavy splash of early-2000s Need for Speed - and the result is a carnage festival that rewards aggression far more than clean racing lines. You play as Mihalych, a former stuntman from Belarus who enters the TRAIL OUT racing festival at the bottom of an eight-driver blacklist. The career structure borrows liberally from NFS: Most Wanted - work up fans and cash, challenge a boss (a race, then a derby), grab their license, repeat. Along the way you're building cars from the ground up at a junkyard, buying shells, slapping on nitrous, and upgrading engines until your original shitbox looks nothing like itself. The garage loop is genuinely satisfying and keeps solo play ticking along nicely. Tracks span Los Angeles highways, Grand Canyon crossroads, lighthouse demolition arenas, and a recognizable recreation of a famous German circuit - none of it takes itself seriously for a second, and that's the point. There are around 50 tracks and eight distinct modes: standard races, elimination (last place gets destroyed every 30 seconds), destruction derbies, a Bowling mode where you launch your driver through the windscreen at giant pins, Darts, and a semi-hidden zombie survival sub-mode called Dead Out that is far weirder than it has any right to be. For couch sessions, the four-player split-screen works well - you will want a big TV - and the physics-heavy chaos keeps rounds short and punchy enough that nobody stays salty for long. On PC you can also use Steam's Remote Play Together for online split-screen. The bad news for anyone hoping to play ranked online: there is no dedicated online multiplayer mode. That is a real gap, and it limits the game's long-term lifespan considerably for solo players who burn through the campaign. The campaign itself can hit a grindy wall mid-way, where the fan-count required to unlock the next tier outpaces what regular events pay out, forcing free-race grinding that kills momentum. The AI rubberbands in ways that feel arbitrary, car sounds drew consistent complaints in reviews, and the voice acting is - charitably - a "so bad it's good" experience with accents that don't change regardless of a character's listed nationality. On the handling side, expect arcade looseness rather than simulation depth. Cars lean toward ice-on-tarmac understeer-to-oversteer with not much middle ground, and certain vehicle classes - SUVs especially - feel twitchier than the rest of the roster. For a wheel and pedals setup, there is honestly little reason to use one here; a gamepad is the right tool and it controls smoothly. The Unreal Engine 4 visuals hold up fine during standard racing but framerate can dip during peak destruction on consoles. None of this is fatal, but it adds up for players expecting Wreckfest-level polish. What saves it every time is the moment-to-moment chaos: explosive barrels scattered across every track, crossroads sections that invite head-on T-bones, wrecking balls in derby arenas, and ragdoll drivers tumbling through windscreens in slow motion. Steam's overall rating sits at Mostly Positive across nearly a thousand reviews, which feels exactly right - it's a crowd-pleaser with rough seams, not a genre-definer. Bring your most forgiving friends, lower your voice-acting expectations to the floor, and TRAIL OUT delivers exactly the kind of loud, stupid, memorable racing night you were hoping for.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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