Trail Out Review for PS5

CIS game development is still trying to get back on its feet, but it’s only fair to admit that the number of notable, and sometimes even impressive, projects is growing. However, making a good game is one thing, and entering the Western market is another. Today we’re talking about a racing game from the studio GOOD BOYS — Trail Out, which was recently released on PS5. Such a success is a noticeable achievement and a form of recognition, because on Sony consoles, unlike Steam, you don’t usually see small local indie projects for five and a half players — only hits of varying scale. I missed the project back in the day, so this is my first time experiencing it, and I’m ready to share my impressions.

Trail Out became the studio’s first serious project, but an ambitious one right away. It takes FlatOut’s mechanics with its total destruction as a foundation and adds what can be called the developers’ own vision. The game was first released in 2022 on PC and later appeared on Xbox. Even four years ago, though, the project felt like something in between “give me back my 2000s” and “are you serious?”. Now, its release on PS5 feels almost unreal, but to understand why, some context is needed.

Most of all, Trail Out resembles a mix of Adrenalin: Extreme Show, a fairly successful racing game by Gaijin Entertainment from 2005, memes, and that same arcade FlatOut. But let’s go step by step.

A sad man nicknamed Mikhalych lives a less-than-great life. Luck isn’t on his side, and his old clunker, resembling a VAZ-2105, threatens to fall apart right on the road. Suddenly, Mikhalych cosplays Ryan Gosling’s character from “Blade Runner 2049” and sees something that could fix everything — the Trail Out tournament, where racers from all over the world compete in survival challenges. Filled with motivation, the hero heads to a scrapyard to assemble his new ride and win. From the very premise, it’s already clear that the developers have a strong grasp of Russian humor. This blatant nod to Russia and neighboring countries, as well as the sole protagonist who evokes associations with the show “Nasha Russia,” speaks for itself. Don’t worry, there’s more to come.

The tournament features extremely colorful characters. For example, there’s Big Cheese, an African-American character who is essentially a direct copy of Big Smoke from GTA: San Andreas. He’s not just similar — he’s identical and even says the same famous line: Ah shit, here we go again. There’s also Eugene Tian — naturally, an anime-style Asian girl; Sonya Mass — basically Sonya Blade from Mortal Kombat, and so on. You could call it irony, and I would agree, but such decisions might not make players around the world smile the way they would for a Russian-speaking gamer — they could just as easily cause irritation or even lead to copyright issues. At first, I thought the main character might depend on the language selected at the start. That would’ve been an interesting idea, but no.

The hero also has a friend with the resonant name Zhenka, who wears a gas mask and loves dressing like a 90s aging rocker. Zhenka helps in the garage, and he and Mikhalych share a strong male friendship (only that?). Their meeting even features the iconic handshake from the 1987 movie Predator, which you’ve probably seen in memes and funny videos. When Zhenka appears in the garage, guitar melodies start playing. That would be fine, except it suddenly turns out these are compositions from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Last of Us, and some other well-known projects. They’re altered enough, but still easily recognizable. Another point in favor of a fun CIS game and a red flag for critics from Europe and the US. Even though Zhenka’s sounds can be turned off in the settings.

Together, Mikhalych and Zhenka must earn enough reputation to challenge the other tournament participants, defeat them one by one, and take the podium — specifically first place, because in Trail Out, only one survives.

But what about the gameplay? In a racing game, the races themselves matter first and foremost, not all the surrounding fluff. Well, things are a bit more complicated here. Roughly speaking, there are four elements. The first is the actual competitions, where everyone participates. In them, Mikhalych earns money and gets acquainted with the challenges of the local modes, of which I counted 11 main ones and several additional ones. The second layer of gameplay is buying and upgrading cars. The garage unlocks gradually and directly depends on your success in races. The more prize finishes you have, the higher Mikhalych’s qualification and the more licenses become available to him. However, you can’t buy a ready-made car — you always have to assemble it from scratch at the scrapyard. Finally, the third sublayer is working with reputation. Without a proper number of likes, Mikhalych won’t gain the necessary level of fame and won’t be able to challenge boss characters to duels. This can be done in several ways.

Right away, I’ll say that at first, the races are very impressive. They are diverse, moderately challenging, and sometimes heavily dependent on proper car upgrades. Different track surfaces and vehicle classes affect handling, so blindly hitting start is not a great idea. We’ll talk about the graphics later, but overall, Trail Out is a pleasantly vibrant game, and the numerous explosions and effects are genuinely thrilling.

The modes are varied and seem capable of satisfying almost any request. You’ve got classic races, bomb-passing in a small arena, gadget usage, and even intercepting other participants while playing as a police officer. The real highlights are the madness modes, like driver bowling, where you have to launch yourself through the windshield properly and knock down giant pins, as well as darts, billiards, and similar activities. You don’t always have to race in your personal ride either: sometimes competitions take place within a single class of vehicles, where everyone is given identical ones. These races are often especially amusing, since you might get a poorly controlled buggy ready to flip on any turn, or, for example, a UAZ SGR, where you’ll be maneuvering alongside the same bulky boxes on wheels.

I also consider it a plus that multiple players can play on the same screen. A wide variety of modes and maps lets everyone pick something they like and immediately jump into the fun. There’s also a roulette mode, where the Joker (yes, that one) sets the race rules after it has already started. It makes things harder, but the monetary reward is higher. All of this is genuinely fun and varied, but…

First, I don’t quite understand what the developers have been doing since the game’s release in 2022, because it still feels unfinished. In theory, tracks should feature destructibility and various unexpected elements that influence what’s happening. To some extent, this is true, but in a heavily simplified form. If you’re racing in rural areas, you’ll inevitably run into barns and other farmer structures that you can and should ram. The screen turns into chaos: cars crash, everything goes off-plan. But you can’t destroy a barn completely. And after the first lap, most obstacles stop being a threat or even interesting. In the city, the situation is worse: even if the track runs through a shop or warehouse, everything stays intact. If you expected to knock down a house and have it change the race significantly, you need a different game.

The second problem is deeper, because all this variety only works if you’ve forgotten FlatOut 2. Most of what Trail Out offers has already been done before — sometimes to the point of blending together. Some maps feel like they were taken directly from the original and simply redrawn nearly 20 years later without major changes. Special modes aren’t the developers’ invention either, but rather copies. Even some fonts and the car construction system strongly resemble the project by Bugbear Entertainment. Since the real FlatOut has long faded away, these complaints aren’t critical — there are no real alternatives anyway — but the aftertaste remains.

Finally, vehicle destruction — the hallmark of survival racing — is done fairly well in Trail Out. However, through experience, I noticed that it’s mostly the player’s car that gets wrecked. Other racers rarely fly through windshields or lose important parts affecting handling. Each driver has their own durability level, but it’s so high that in any mode except Derby, ramming is almost pointless. The only real advantage comes from track shortcuts, and there are quite a few of them. Though keeping track of both the race and the minimap at the same time is a challenge in itself.

What I absolutely didn’t like is the physics. Cars have a certain weight and impact during collisions, but almost every dangerous situation inevitably leads to Mikhalych’s failure. The issue is that crashes practically glue your car to the object. The only way to get back into the race is to hold a special button. The reset takes an unforgivably long time and also has a cooldown. So you often end up lying flat on your roof on the asphalt, helplessly waiting, waiting, and waiting while your opponents drive past. On top of that, extra button presses disrupt your rhythm. In most racing games, the return-to-track function has long been automatic or at least much faster. Requiring player input suggests that crashes aren’t hopeless and you can recover on your own without teleporting, but that’s not the case in Trail Out. A serious crash at the start followed by a reset is basically an automatic failure — you might as well restart the race.

The controls are basic and boil down to acceleration, braking, and a handbrake. You can enable manual transmission and realistic opponents, but it’s hard to see why you’d want that in a game where you’re supposed to throw your driver at bowling pins. What’s worse is that the handbrake is essentially useless. You’ll almost never be able to take a turn properly at speed, and the optimal tactic is the simplest one: slow down with the brake and carefully drive through. As a result, in a game about survival and constant destruction, the most successful player is the one who avoids all that and tries to drive clean, which sometimes kills the fun.

Random events on the track behave oddly. During my entire playthrough, only the tornado on the desert map had any noticeable impact. The idea is great, but first, it’s impossible to avoid, and second, getting sucked into it effectively means losing and pressing that same reset button. The player has no option to overcome the obstacle successfully without losing speed. In other words, random events don’t add variety to the race — they just ruin it.

It almost feels like the developers are deliberately slowing down progression, forcing you to win not through skill but through the number of upgrades. I had similar thoughts more than once. In the bomb-passing mode, I deliberately tried driving as carefully as possible to avoid any contact with opponents. In theory, that should have guaranteed victory, since the bomb wouldn’t damage me. For a while, it worked, but then the game suddenly gave me a collision timer. I didn’t manage to crash into anyone because I kept my distance, and I was disqualified. So even technically fulfilling the race condition doesn’t guarantee success.

And yet, it’s still fun to play, and the tracks are genuinely diverse. Where else in 2026 will they let you race across the ice of the frozen Neva River with your friends?

As for upgrades, everything here is fairly primitive. The garage offers only a few upgrade branches: body, engine, gearbox, ECU, suspension, nitro, and wheels. Always three levels each. Stickers and paint don’t count. Visually, body kits and improvements don’t affect the car, so creating something spectacular or фантастическое won’t work. Only the stats change.

There’s also little point in unlocking the entire car roster. When you obtain a new license, a whole set of vehicles becomes available at once. The more expensive the car, the more powerful it is — that’s the entire logic. If you upgrade everything step by step, the stat increase is minimal, meaning you won’t gain any noticeable advantage on the track. As a result, upgrades follow roughly the same pattern: buy the best available car, slowly improve it until it surpasses your current one in every aspect, switch vehicles, and repeat the process.

All car brands are altered, but their real-world counterparts are easy to recognize. You can, for example, get a VAZ-2109 or Dominic Toretto’s favorite ride. But again, there’s no real reason to significantly expand your garage. If something like the UAZ SGR could actually be turned into a Derby monster, there would be no questions, but right now it’s just an extra waste of time and resources.

Tires also matter on the track. As mentioned earlier, depending on the type of wheels, grip changes, which directly affects handling. This does make a difference and is especially noticeable on winter tracks, but I didn’t find any other meaningful upgrades that significantly impact the player’s capabilities.

Finally, the third aspect, and probably the most controversial one, is reputation grinding. At its core, it grows from podium finishes, but Mikhalych can also spend time in a special app on his phone. There, he launches live streams, chats with other participants, collects donations, and takes on challenges with special objectives during races.

It sounds genuinely unusual, and there’s even an additional mobile game on the phone where you drive around destroying hordes of zombies, complete with its own progression system and mechanics. But in practice, it all feels like a concept rather than a fully realized feature.

For example, the streams are always the same: Mikhalych stares into the camera for a few seconds, and that’s it. The chat with characters consists of static messages, where the hero responds with pre-written phrases — you don’t get to choose. Donations and challenges act as free support for the player, slightly speeding up progression if you’re stuck.

Over time, Mikhalych learns to change outfits. He can easily dress up as the Dude from The Big Lebowski or literally Ryan Gosling — or rather, his character from Drive. Funny, but very questionable.

A few words about the graphics and music. The tracks look nice, but the facial animations are a nightmare. During races, everything looks decent: the scenery isn’t breathtaking, but it’s not off-putting either. Cutscenes, however, are bad across the board. On top of that, the Russian voice acting sounds like it was generated by a neural network. The English version isn’t any better.

During races, the game occasionally shows cockpit views of different participants. Usually, nothing interesting happens there — the character model just drives, and that’s it. What the point of this feature was remains unclear.

The PS5 settings offer absolutely nothing that affects visuals. You can forget about performance or quality modes. Buttons sometimes freeze and refuse to switch, although, to be fair, that’s the only bug I encountered.

Navigation is oddly designed. Everything feels slow, and many submenus or repetitive cutscenes can’t be skipped at all.

The music, however, didn’t disappoint. There are both popular tracks and lesser-known ones, but all of them are energetic. Unfortunately, there’s no detailed audio customization, so the songs sometimes get lost in the noise of the race, which is a shame. Some of them I’d gladly listen to on repeat.

No adaptive triggers either. It’s unclear what advantages the PS5 version has over the PC release.

And so, approaching the end of the review, I’m left with very mixed impressions. On one hand, Trail Out is a solid representative of its niche. It has the most important thing — fun and diverse racing. On the other hand, the game comes with a whole pile of buts. The heavy reliance on jokes that only Russian-speaking players will fully appreciate might also backfire.

While looking for information about the developers, I came across an announcement of Trail Out 2. Work is already underway. Perhaps the PS5 release was never a major priority for the studio, just a nice bonus. That would explain a lot. As it stands, this new release is objectively a very basic game. Everything GOOD BOYS borrowed from FlatOut 2 works great — it’s just not entirely their achievement.

What it really needs is more new ideas, not just memes and guitar arrangements, more unique modes, and cars that are actually interesting to upgrade. Maybe the sequel will deliver that. For now, it’s a solid mid-tier game for a couple of evenings or for a group of enthusiastic friends — nothing more.