TRAIL OUT Reviews

A very unforgiving & grindy game, but the over-the-top action & sense of destruction make it all worth it. Also, you can run over the flag girl. ABSOLUTE PEAK.

I picked this game up off of reviews and from prior interest in similar games such as Burnout / Need for Speed back on the PS2. I have also played Flatout 2 which this game is sort of an offshoot of by different developers from what I gather. I'll start off by saying I like the gameplay while in the typical races, though some of the alternate modes are a miss for me, especially when they are mandatory for the main campaign / career. I played the demo for over an hour before I bought the game and all dlc for 50% off. Almost everything else surrounding or related to the gameplay is iffy, dodgy, charitably weird or uncharitably gross. I'm inclined to agree with other reviews calling the cars weightless or floaty, but they don't bother me a whole lot. Customization of parts is present, but don't offer much to the core gameplay loop. Pretty much boils down to "what tires do you need" and "faster vs beefer frame". I have noticed some wild rubberbanding effects at times, some tracks are questionable in their execution. Some other dislikes; Paint for cars having preset styles or colors to select from is fine, but having to endlessly repair a vehicle every time I'm done with a race(unless I select one of the free repair paints) is an annoyance. Getting caught on a tiny bump and having your car flip or be outright snagged and stopped is a bit of a vibe killer. Exploding enemy vehicles in races is fun, though in the derby mode, not so much. Really not a fan of getting a zoom in on someone's burning body for a solid 5 seconds in which I can do nothing but stare at them. Biggest personal gripe are the usage of flashing effects. Nearly every prompt or main menu button involves a flash which bothers my eyes, I could not find a setting to disable it. Checkpoints during some races also have a flash present. That should cover just about everything with the gameplay, or directly involved with the vehicles. Which I still like the gameplay part of the game, I just wish I wasn't getting flashbanged endlessly! But I'm now going to dig into the rest of the surrounding stuff. I'll lay it out plainly in no particular order: Story related voice lines are all over the place, do not line up with subtitles. Subtitles sometimes don't play at the proper speed or hang around for extended periods. There's a weird uncanny feeling or vibe throughout the entire story, from how lines are delivered or even how words are pronounced. The introduction going "here's a dog that decided you're its new owner and also you're besties with someone who's an Ex-KGB torturer was a bit of a mental flashbang, which then immediately throws you into a race without a chance to visit the settings first. Some characters feel like overblown, edgy teen humor representations of nations or places rather than played for comedy in a bombastic way. The whole involvement of characters feels weird and offputting to me, but I initially chalked it up to the Flatout series already containing them. Sexualized outfits female characters involving a bulletproof vest with nothing under it for one and a tracksuit with the zipper half undone for two. That latter one actually has a covered version but I don't remember it being used past just being on a driver card or whatever poster once. The final thing that made me actually reflect upon the game was during a late ish derby level involving a mall setting, in which a male mannequin was reaching around and groping a female mannequin during one of the panning camera shots of the arena. It gave me pause to reflect and think about the game as a whole. Icky. Game has great visuals, plays well enough, but everything surrounding it feels like it's over 10 years old. I'm leaning against supporting directly related games in the future. I'll probably still play more since it's not like I can refund at this point, but I would not recommend this game.

This game is an excellent successor to FlatOut. You've got over the top explosions and crashing with tons of cars and an okay selection of tracks. Buy it if you enjoy FlatOut. Runs well on Steam Deck, I beat the whole campaign on it.

i have had way more fun on this game than test drive unlimited solar crown. despite the really bad car physics. the goofy bad voice acting feels like fast and furious crossroads and im liking that. i really feel like the devs should focus on researching car physics and look up the beamng youtube channel. could help them a lot with understanding how to translate physics for cars into games. does flatout better than flatout. just needs flatout better car physics. the game has enough content for a year. in 2026 it should be physics overhaul year. its really the only thing major holding it back.

As a casual gamer and a person who never though they would like a racing game, this game is amazing. It's really addicting and it's so satisfying when you ram into other cars. There is a nice variety of game modes and mechanics to keep you invested. I also love that you can add your own music into the game. There are a ton of cars you can choose from. There's even a zombie mode that I really like. You have to keep a nice balance of money and fans. The only thing negative I can say are the "No time" races. I know you can lower the difficulty but those races are extremely difficult and sometimes frustrating.

I really wanted this to be a Flatout 2 type game and in some aspects it is. I love the music, the car list is great, many of the tracks are also pretty close to how they were in Fo2 and the devs clearly made heavy references to that game. HOWEVER: The handling and destruction feel much closer to Flatout 4 a game I was never fond of and having this feel like a slight upgrade to it sours my enjoyment completely. Yes it is still a lot better than 4 (not even to mention 3), yet it feels nowhere as refined or well put together as the original Bug Bear games. If you want the Flatout 2 successor go and buy Wreckfest, if you liked Flatout 4 and thought hey, that game could be better with references to GTA, Need 4 Speed Most Wanted and more, than this is a decent option. I won't recommend it as it is not a game I particularly liked, but it's not bad. If Steam had a Mixed or Meh option I'd choose that.

It tries really hard to be Flat Out. It delivers more in quantity but far less in quality. - Handling is extremely weird. Everything seems to either understeer or drift. No in between. - Cars feel weightless. - Frontally hitting another car has no sense of impact. It's just short a *BONK* sound effect. - Just driving on straight road sometimes comically flips your car, like an extremely over-exagerated banana peel skit. It's funny for a few times, and then it gets annoying bc you don't have any control. - Jumping 90% of the time just sends your car tumbling and rolling and skipping along for a few hundred meters, it's ridiculous. - Music pretty bland and generic. Not sure, but possibly AI generated. - Tiresome animations in menu, and unskippable cut-scenes at the start of races. - Story & setting are not really relevant to racing games, but it kinda feels like it would have been better if they weren't even there. Ignorable at best and pretty cringe at worst. Flat Out is guilty of some of these too, but not even remotely close to this extent. Just play FO2 again.

Great concept of the game and it would be fun... Apperently all the fun this game could have provided is just ruined by steering and physics - both do not exist. Game looks quite nice and it could have been ,, New Flatout'' but due to terrible steering it is just not playable. I do play this as I bought it but it is not giving me any positive vibes. All the fun is ruined by steering that leads to random slides, random strange behavior of cars. I know it is not a sim and it should not be a sim but... Driving should be the best point of the fun game in which you are driving and giving some damage/destroy to enemies. In this one this is just terrible and games like Flatout 2/Destruction Derby or any arcade has better driving ,,physics''. Totally wasted money and if I won't manage to accept this I will just go for refund. Great features: - variety of cars - fun concept - nice music Terrible features that are putting me off? -physics - behavior of cars as if they were totally weightless...

This game would be really fun if a few major issues were fixed. As is, skip even on sale. First, I have a worse framerate than in Cyberpunk 2077, for crying out loud. The game looks nice, but not THAT nice. And I'm running on a Ryzen 5800 X / 32 GB RAM / RX 9060 XT 16 GB. Also, FSR in this game is version 2, so basically you don't want to use it. It makes the game uglier than the main character's face, and that is saying something. Then, while physics has no business being realistic in a game like this and I'm fine with that, it should at least be consistent. Predictable. It definetely is NOT. Sometimes you're thrown around for no reason at all, and I'm not talking about when an opponent hits you, no, I'm talking about lightly tapping a wall and suddenly feel like a Skyrim giant clubbed you. Or sometimes you just try turning right and for some reason, while your wheels are indeed pointing right, you car will keep turning left. In a game like this, this isn't acceptable. There are times the interface stops responding to controller input, for no apparent reason. Using the mouse, it still works, and once you get it to work again with the mouse it will start responding to controller input again... Until next time. Since I've played less than an hour and had that issue several times, you can imagine "next time" is never really far. Every single menu action requires an animation to transition from one thing to the next. But if you accidentaly hit the key / button to go back, then the animation plays entirely AND then you return to the previous menu. Lovely when you're tyrying to upgrade a car... Also, I hope you're not buying the game for the story. Less than an hour in I already wanted to gouge my eyes out and drill my eardrums. It looks ugly, it plays terrible, it sounds even worse, and the only way the character could have "russian stereotype" vibes any higher would be if Putin was tatooed on his forehead. Finally, be informed that the "complete" bundle is not actually complete. It doesn't include the Moto Rush DLC. Oversight or plain dishonesty, I cannot say, but buyer beware. I'd love to be able to enjoy this game, I haven't seen anything this promising since Flat Out... But they need to make it functional first. Refund requested.

Cars feel like they have no weight. The smallest bump will send your car flipping. At every turn, your car will lose traction (even with the proper tires) and start drifting and the AI will then T-Bone you and flip you around. It's just not fun.