If you've never been too keen on those big open-world MMORPG everyone seems to be excited these days, or maybe you're sick and tired of those fancy real time strategies that take a lot of RAM and are just not your type. Or even if you are a big fan of them, but are looking for half an hour for mayhem, adrenaline rush and intense reflexes just to relax your mind, Pyroblazer comes as a pleasant surprise you should try.

Bringing fast-paced action similar to the acclaimed Star Wars Pod Racer or F-Zero, Pyroblazer features futuristic races with anti-gravity vehicles called Blazers. New Apeiron, the place where the competition takes place, offers a large variety of environments and tracks to satisfy every player. From deserts to outer space platforms, your Blazer will fight its way to become number one against six other players - humans or AI controlled.

You see, everything isn't about speed, maneuverability, reflexes or having the best vehicle. Some strategic placement of mines and booby-traps along with a healthy amount of shooting are required in order to win the races.

Pyroblazer utilizes Eipix's Ultra graphics Engine combine with PhysX from Nvidia (previously Ageia) for great results. Settings can be customized in detail, and even though I tested an early preview version, I couldn't find any bugs whatsoever - with physics or graphics.

Although tracks aren't randomly generated with various segments combined like in Pod Racer for example, they are well thought and different enough to make every race a unique experience.  In order to enhance the gaming experience you can chose to race during the day or night, while the default setting will randomly generate one of these instances. Combined with unlockable ships and various abilities, this offers great replayability for the game.

Blazers have different properties, they can be light and faster or slower but with improved armor; they can have a minigun or homing missile launcher mounted, or some sort of defensive shield; they can be smaller or bigger. There are many customization possibilities for each and every one of you.

Like Unreal for example, singleplayer and instant match modes are a nice bonus to have, but without the multiplayer component, this game is nothing. Pyroblazer can be great fun while playing with your best friends at a cool LAN party; and if that is not an option, it also supports an online multiplayer mode like any decent game these days. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test out multiplayer at all, since this preview version only offers me the instant action and singleplayer menu.

Campaign should also be an interesting option, where players can evolve through the game story, gain faster and better armed Blazers, and customize them to their liking. Quite a few ship models are available, and the ship designer(s) made an excellent job on each of them.

Music is also something worth mentioning, because I find that it matches the game pretty well actually. It's somewhat a combination of Unreal's "imposing" music, with some Arabic influences from time to time. And the best aspect of it is that you hear it and like it when you listen, but it doesn't get in your way when you are listening if your enemy wants to sneak up from behind you.

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There's nothing special to mention about the sounds however, just your regular lasers, explosions, and impact hits. While they aren't annoying, they don't stand out much either - but do their job, I suppose.

Handling your Blazer is both easy and hard: easy to learn, and hard to master, because you must have a really developed 3D imagination, adapt quickly and react fast to your surroundings. Frequently you will find asking yourself "where am I!?", or even worse "what killed me!?". But don't worry, practice makes things perfect, and besides, that's what singleplayer is for - to get you started for those long multiplayer battles.

In addition to your "on board" weapons, there are collectables to be found all over the circuit tunnels, such as nukes, mines of all sorts, shields, invisibility, and the now so-popular "quad-damage". Plus you can collect some sort of coins to recharge boost or your weapons ammo.

Sometimes all the colors and fast scrolling - plus your concentration to the game can literally make your eyes cry, so the classic advice nobody reads anymore "take a 15 minute break after every hour" is something you should pay a lot more attention now!

Conclusion

You should really give Pyroblazer a chance once it's out, as it may turn out to be a very fun and enjoyable little game. We'll have to wait and see how multiplayer turns out in the final version of course, but this one already shows a nice progress.