Before Wreckfest, Bugbear Entertainment was best known for the FlatOut series. Inspired by Finnish folk racing, the first two titles were revered for their advanced car and environment destruction physics.
Since the developer lost the rights and moved on to Wreckfest, other studios have attempted to revive the franchise, but FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction and FlatOut 4: Total Insanity failed to live up to their predecessor’s legacy.
FlatOut’s unofficial sequel
With no new entries on the horizon aside from a VR spin-off, indie studio Good Boys developed Trail Out, a spiritual successor to the original FlatOut games that debuted in 2022 on PC. An Xbox Series X|S port followed in 2024, and now, nearly four years after its initial PC release, the destructive racing game has finally landed on PS5.
Trail Out wears its influences on its bodywork. From tracks set in storm drains, forests and farmyards to named characters on loading screens and a soundtrack featuring underground artists, it’s an unapologetic throwback to FlatOut.
Its most obvious homage, however, is ragdoll-physics minigames where you eject your driver through the windscreen in slapstick games of bowling, billiards and darts.
FlatOut isn’t the only reference point, either. One character, Big Cheese, parodies Big Smoke from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, complete with a penchant for “two number nines,” while another clearly resembles The Joker.
Crash for cash
In a not-so-subtle nod to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, the career mode sees you attempt to beat seven notorious drivers in the ‘Blacklist.’
This begins with you picking your first car from a junkyard and building it from scratch by purchasing and installing components such as the engine, gearbox and suspension. This is depicted in a satisfying animation where your car is scooped up from a scrap pile and dropped onto the ground.
There’s also a loose storyline where you enter the Trail Out festival as former stuntman Mihalych – but the less said about the stiff voice acting and animations during the brief cutscenes, the better.
Split into eight rounds, each culminating in head-to-head boss battles against a Blacklist rival, the career mode is brilliantly varied with a multitude of game modes.
Beyond standard full-contact races, events range from demolition derbies to figure-of-eights and a ‘Hunter’ Pursuit mode where you chase down rivals in a police car and take them out with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit-style weapons. There’s even a mode that focuses on using gadgets inspired by Blur to obliterate opponents.
Contact mode is a clear highlight. Here, you pass a detonating bomb to cars by hitting them while trying not to blow yourself up, resulting in frantic matches with last-second escapes. This mode also features one of the most memorable environments: a museum filled with glass cabinets and giant dinosaur skeletons to destroy.
Then there’s the Split/Second-style eliminator mode, where the driver in last place gets blown up by a missile fired by a military plane at different intervals, triggering an explosion so deafening that it will rock your living room if you have a home theatre system.
The career mode constantly throws surprises at you. One minute, you’re taking on a snow stage time trial in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo-style rally car. Next, you’re competing in a novelty golf cart race. However, it can sometimes get too grindy, with events requiring a specific number of fans or podium finishes to unlock. Vehicle repair costs can also hamper progress.
Fans are acquired by smashing into scenery and opponents, finishing on the podium, or completing optional challenges in an interactive ‘Festapp,’ where you can also receive donations to spend on building new vehicles or repairs.
Also hidden within this app is a secret apocalyptic mode with zombie hordes to massacre. You can even get out of the car and fight zombies on foot, though it feels like a proof of concept, rather than a fully-fledged mode.
Ultimate carnage
As a destruction-focused arcade racer, Trail Out excels. Every environment is fully destructible, with smashable fences, buildings and flammable propane canisters that trigger more explosions than a Michael Bay film.
Some also add hazards to avoid, such as oncoming trucks, high-speed trains and a rampaging tornado that sucks you in and throws you across the track.
Coupled with aggressive opponents, every event is absolute carnage. Reminiscent of the original Flatout games, the action is more absurd than Wreckfest, which is comparatively grounded and realistic.
At times, the sheer scale of the destruction can lead to noticeable framerate dips during the most chaotic moments. Although post-release patches have improved the performance, some tracks, such as a Tokyo street circuit, still suffer frequent slowdowns. While it can’t match the soft-body modelling in Wreckfest and BeamNG.Drive, vehicle damage is also impressive for a lower-budget game.
Tracks are elaborately designed, too, with a raft of shortcuts and alternative routes to find. The aforementioned Tokyo circuit, for example, sees you battle on narrow streets, hurtle across a highway, crash through a construction site, drive up a multi-storey car park and land on a railway while avoiding oncoming bullet trains. All of that happens in just one lap.
Trail Out’s arcade-style driving is less satisfying, sadly. Vehicles lack a sense of weight, making them feel floaty and twitchy to drive. This can lead to lighter vehicles rolling over too easily when clipping a bump, which can feel unpredictable.
At least the roster is diverse, with around vehicles ranging from muscle cars to SUVs and school buses. None are licensed, but they all closely resemble real-world vehicles such as the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, and Aston Martin DB5.
Outdated visuals, performance stutters, audio glitches, and game crashes leave Trail Out feeling unpolished, like a battered banger racer being pushed beyond its limits.
It’s also a shame there’s no online multiplayer, as the chaotic racing would thrive with other players. Split-screen multiplayer for up to four players makes up for this, though, and runs surprisingly smoothly.
These shortcomings are easy to forgive as Trail Out offers tremendous value and an impressive wealth of cars, tracks and game modes for only £24.99 / $24.99 on PS5.
On top of that, the base game bundles four previously released DLC packs, including a homage to Need for Speed: Most Wanted’s BMW M3 GTR hero car. Two premium DLC packs can also be purchased: one of them introduces Road Rash-style motorcycle combat.
If you put Flatout, Split/Second, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Blur into a blender, the result would be Trail Out. By taking the best ideas from other games, it sometimes struggles to find its own identity. Ultimately, though, Trail Out is a smashing tribute to a racing game sub-genre that rarely gets acknowledged anymore.
As an arcade-style alternative to Wreckfest, its riotous racing and destructible environments scratch the itch when you’re in the mood for some mindless mayhem. It sets a solid precedent for the open-world sequel due in 2027.
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