Visually, SCEA has done an excellent job in bringing the series to the PSP as ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails looks very similar to its PlayStation 2 big brothers. The environments are huge, organic and smoothly rendered, and the effects, texturing and lighting is nearly as good as well. The framerate is locked at a nearly solid 30fps, which isn't quite as silky smooth as the PS2's 60, but it’s something that is not at all obvious on the small screen. The animation of the ATVs, and the riders especially, is well done, and the ragdoll-like physics when tossed off your ride (which happens very often), looks quite nice. The courses range from indoor Supercross arenas to huge sprawling outdoor landscapes and none fail to impress in one way or another.

The audio is dominated by an eclectic soundtrack that ranges from Joan Jett to Slipknot, and covers a wide selection of styles. Everything from country to techno is represented, and a good portion of it works well. Some of the annoying Good Charlotte and sound-alikes do get on the nerves rather quickly. The ATV engines spew out a variety of realistic buzzes and pops and the crowds lining the arenas sound like they are actually excited to watch you race.

As alluded to earlier, the physics model in the game can be quite unforgiving. Clipping an object on the course such as the edge of barrier, or landing a jump at an off angle, or being bumped the wrong way can send you face-down in the dirt and to the back of the pack in an instant. Despite the large size of the PSP screen, one of the drawbacks of playing a fast moving game like Blazin' Trails on a handheld system is the problem of quickly identifying some of these important little details. This problem rears its ugly head fairly often, but it would have been somewhat more forgivable if it were not for 2 other issues; extremely long load times and insanely long races. This first generation of PSP games have long load times, yes, but Blazin' Trails may take the cake. Loading a race can take upwards of 40 - 50 seconds, no exaggeration. I'm a pretty patient person, but waiting that long is just unacceptable. Restarting your current race, which is something you'll do quite a few times, is thankfully more or less instantaneous. After finally getting started, many races can then last more than 5 or 6 minutes a piece. Now imagine you've just played through a few minutes of one of the longer courses and are leading the pack, and then suddenly you misread an angle, end up in last place, and have no choice but to restart the race. The lengthy load and race times definitely do not lend themselves well to a handheld title.

The gameplay also mimics the console versions pretty closely. The ATV’s are a wee bit touchy at first, and the pre-loading of jumps and techniques for chaining together tricks takes some getting used to. After a few hours most of it becomes second nature… except for the times when you are launched off your ATV for what seems like no good reason.

ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails is extremely full featured for a handheld game. The championship mode is loaded with events and things to unlock, and takes many hours to play through, even on the easiest level. Add to that a practice/training mode, single race and lap attack modes, freeride mode, 10 mini-games such as King off the Hill and Soccer, a ton of customization and tuning options, as well as a nice set of mulitplayer modes and options. The game supports both ad-hoc and infrastructure Wi-Fi modes for up to 6 players and they are both similarly full featured. The internet/infrastructure play in Blazin' Trails is as solid as the console versions, and the options are nearly as extensive. I was especially happy to see that Climax created their own on-screen keyboard instead of using the PSP’s clunky API version. The online races are definitely fun, especially with the inclusion of the winning/losing of cards you’ve unlocked, but the mini-games are right up there as well.

If you liked the console versions of Offroad Fury or any other similar ATV game for that matter, then you’ll likely approve of ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails. The game is packed with modes, options and replayability, though it has a few annoying problems which takes away from the potential enjoyability of it all.