The ATV racer is a new genre, seemingly spawned one day and then overcrowded the next. Sony's own ATV series made a name because of its online play on the Playstation 2, and the developers were wise to incorporate that into the PSP version. Unfortunately, that's one of the few reasons to bother with Blazin' Trails, which has little to offer outside of that, and there's sure to be a flood of these games soon anyway.
All the basics are covered, including minor rider customization, upgrades for your vehicle, new ATVs, mini-games, and a variety of races. Courses are unlocked as you make your way through the challenge mode, and money is earned for each race depending on performance and tricks performed. Local ad hoc multi-player is available too in case you don't have the necessary pieces to play online.
There's not much to the actual racing that makes it special or different. You're definitely racing an ATV, but it could be a motorcycle or dune buggy and you would never know the difference. Controls are fine, cornering needs to be mastered (and you need to be paying attention at all times), and power sliding is fun. Physics are loose and not necessarily realistic, they simply lean towards the more fun side of things. The trick system is fairly implemented; it just doesn't do very much in many of the game modes. There's no actual racing bonus for doing them.
Pre-loading your jump was something that was controlled by the second analog stick on the PS2. For the PSP, you simply hold back on the single analog stick. That sounds fine, but if you're holding the accelerator, you'll be performing a wheelie. In other words, you need to actually loose speed to get ready for a jump. That doesn't make any sense, and while there's not many control options left, a different button should have been assigned to perform the wheelie.
The AI is the most ridiculous problem the game has, varying each race. Some races, wiping out on the first lap is enough to cost you the race. The next time, you can crash 10 times and they'll never even come close to catching up. It seems to be entirely random as to how they're going to react. There are also occasional glitches, including spots on the track that you will hit and crash against, even though there's nothing there to impede your progress. Putting the PSP in sleep mode during a race can cause multiple graphical glitches as polygons are sent warping all over the screen.
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