There are two types of Blazing activities: One is provided by Kinzie, and the other is provided by Angel, three apiece. The flavors of both are quite different, but both ultimately involve running into some things while avoiding other things. Of course, there’s a bit more to them than that.
Kinzie’s Cyber Blazing takes on an appearance similar to that of another film legacy that saw a recent update.
You must race down a half-pipe of sorts, crashing through digitized tanks on the cyberscape, while evading firewalls. Hitting the tanks improves your time bonus by 2 seconds, which adds to your time limit as you reach each checkpoint.
The checkpoints add 7 (8 on the Hard difficulty) seconds to the clock before the time bonus is added. Hitting a firewall takes 2 seconds off the clock, and the tracks sometimes bury tanks among firewalls. Use your best judgment and avoid going for tanks if it means you have you run through a mess of firewalls first.
You do get some help on the track, besides Kinzie’s snarky commentary on your skills. You’ll see translucent spherical patches of blue and orange flame floating above the track surface. Driving through them unleashes a trail of flame that homes in on the nearest tank. This can help you destroy those well-protected tanks in safety.
Despite the simplicity of this minigame, don’t get too careless. The half-pipe nature of the track means that if you swerve too wildly, you can end up slowed down or completely flipped over. On the later tracks, you absolutely cannot afford delays between checkpoints.
And then there’s Angel De LaMuerte. He believes you are still not bad enough to handle the Luchadores, so he has a special training session in mind for you. After equipping you with a heat-resistant space suit, and sticking you on a quad bike that trails hot flame as you drive it, he wants you to drive through the streets and cause as much havoc as possible.
Like the Cyberspace Trail Blazing activity, you have a small starting time limit that can increase by driving through obstacles like cars . . .
. . . or people.
You can improve your destructive ride through the city by picking up small patches of flames, which literally become homing missiles that rip apart clusters of vehicles you miss running into.
Each instance of Angel’s Trail Blazing works on a checkpoint system similar to that of Kinzie’s game, but the big difference here is that you’re in the city and have much more space to play in. Each checkpoint is marked by arrows that basically tell you in what direction you should travel to get to the next checkpoint. A big difference is that once you get to a checkpoint in this mode, you get your time bonus, and it is reset to zero, meaning you must keep up the destruction between checkpoints if you want to have enough time to reach the end.
On every one of Angel’s Trail Blazer activities, you should make a serious effort to hit groups of people. This can be difficult as sidewalk obstacles, combined with the impact of the bodies, can slow you down and knock you off course and into a wall, but the time bonus you get from hitting a pedestrian is two seconds, compared to the one second per car. Any time you see a sidewalk full of people, go for it!
As these races take place in the city, you have many side routes you can take to reach some of the checkpoints, which can reward you with more flame missiles that hit more targets. They also can cost you a lot of time on the clock. Generally, you want to follow the route set by the GPS, but pay attention to the direction the checkpoint arrows are pointing. They clue you in to where checkpoint is, assuming you could drive through everything completely unhindered. The GPS has a habit of pointing out the most direct road route to a checkpoint, which isn’t necessarily the fastest. Feel free to pause the game to map out a route if necessary
Trail Blazer 1—Kinzie: Cyber (#51)
Location: Salander
Difficulty: Easy
Checkpoints: 11
Starting Time Limit: 0:25
Cash Earned: $2,000
Respect Earned: 200
Rewards: 5% Deckers Gang District Control—$197 per hour
When you call Kinzie up for this activity, she claims she needs help with boxes. The boss of the Saints is decidedly less than amused, but Kinzie does manage to salvage your interest by telling you of a neat little program she’s developed that will allow you to damage the Deckers in cyberspace by playing a simple little video game. Not bad.
The first Cyberspace Trail Blazing you do is not very complex, but there are some tricky firewall traps that guard tanks between checkpoints four and five. If you’re willing to risk it, you can graze the sides of firewalls and not incur a penalty. But what really counts the most on this and any future Cyber Trail Blazing missions is maintaining good speed through the whole track. You can miss many tanks, but as long as you’re evading the firewalls, you can make it to each checkpoint with time to spare.
After the seventh checkpoint, stay alert. A wide swath of firewalls covers the majority of the center of the track. If you’re really gutsy, you can try weaving through them, but it is best just to swerve wide to the sides of the pipe and bypass them all.
After that, it’s pretty smooth sailing. Beating this first instance of Cyberspace Trail Blazing unlocks two others within the city.
Trail Blazer 2—Kinzie: Cyber (#52)
Location: Burns Hill
Difficulty: Medium
Checkpoints: 14
Starting Time Limit: 0:30
Cash Earned: $4,000
Respect Earned: 400
Rewards: 3% Deckers Gang District Control—$56 per hour
The start of the race is fairly straightforward, but watch out for this little series of traps after checkpoint 5.
If you’re badly positioned, you could lose a lot of time on the clock, and miss the tanks behind the traps on top of that. You could try to knife through the gap in the center, then cut left or right to evade the last trap in the middle, while gunning for a tank. It might be easier if you just go into the turn wide on the left, and ride above the first set of traps.
Right after checkpoint 9 is another tricky trap, with the tanks right behind the firewalls. If you’re short on time, just swing around the firewalls and tanks.
Checkpoint 10 leads into a curve to the right, and the left side of the half-pipe is dominated by firewalls, with a tank trying to entice you into them.
If you’re good on time, you can ignore it, but it is fun to try and thread the needle through the tank and between firewalls.
Trail Blazer 3—Kinzie: Cyber (#53)
Location: Ashwood
Difficulty: Hard
Checkpoints: 17
Starting Time Limit: 0:30
Cash Earned: $6,000
Respect Earned: 600
Rewards: 2% Deckers Gang District Control—$106 per hour
This ride is significantly longer than the previous two, but the same tips work just the same. If you concentrate on evading firewalls and maintain good speed, you can ignore tanks that are too precarious to reach.
Just before checkpoint 3, you get a real taste of what this track is all about. Firewalls are scattered haphazardly all over the half-pipe before and after the checkpoint, and the racing line to get through them is difficult to reach if you’ve been hugging the center. You can afford to hit a couple of firewalls, but try not to swerve so wildly that you lose control and keep hitting more.
After checkpoint 4, the pipe curves right, and there are more firewalls scattered all over the place. Try to stay centered after evading the initial series of firewalls just after the checkpoint; you can use the center line as a guide to nail a tank.
Passing checkpoint 9, the pipe curves right and begins to climb. Keep your eyes peeled for a tank and a blue flame during this climb (they are side by side).
You only have time to hit one of them. The flame guarantees a kill on a tank beyond the one next to it, but you can try to ram the both tanks. However, doing so does put you in a bad position to hit firewalls.
Things calm down a bit beyond checkpoint 10 and your primary concern becomes more about maintaining good speed and evading the occasional firewall-and-tank trap, but don’t get too complacent.
Just before the last checkpoint, another large group of firewalls is placed in an attempt to drain down the clock, which can be devastating if you’re already short on time.
Trail Blazer 1—Angel: Fire (#54)
Location: Bridgeport
Difficulty: Easy
Checkpoints: 6
Starting Time Limit: 0:30
Cash Earned: $2,000
Respect Earned: 200
Rewards: 2% Luchadores Gang District Control—$88 per hour
Angel believes this training method will allow you to feel the heat of a real battle against Killbane. So, assuming you fight him in an underground lava cavern and he’s hitting you with a sledgehammer ripped free from the very rocks surrounding you both, you’ll be okay because you already know that sensation from this mission.
For this first Angel race, you can find many alleys and side streets between the third, fourth, and fifth checkpoints, respectively, but you can still reach the goal in this and all other Trail Blazer missions by sticking to the main path. As long as you take the time to hit as many targets as possible between each checkpoint, your time bonus will be large enough to help carry you to the next checkpoint with time to spare.
Completing the first of Angel’s Trail Blazer missions unlocks two more for you to toughen up with!
Trail Blazer 2—Angel: Fire (#55)
Location: The Grove
Difficulty: Medium
Checkpoints: 9
Starting Time Limit: 0:30
Cash Earned: $4,000
Respect Earned: 400
Rewards: 2% Luchadores Gang District Control—$77 per hour
Stay with the GPS route on your way to checkpoint 2.
The reason is that the stretch of road from checkpoint 2 up to 3 usually is populated by a lot of pedestrians, which means lots of seconds added to the clock.
So many seconds! So many people!
Checkpoint 3 leads to a street that typically has many cars parked on either side of your path.
You can ram them all yourself, but try to also hit the flame patches as you race through this section to wipe out cars you might miss otherwise.
Things get a little tricky at checkpoint 6. The GPS tries to take you on a long roundabout route to get to it, and you’ll probably not have the time to make it if you slavishly follow the GPS.
Notice how as you approached the checkpoint, the arrow pointed through the hill into the park area? That’s where you need to go. Navigate through the grassy area, around the rock formations, and get back on the road.
Checkpoint 7 awaits, with many more people on the sidewalks. From here, if you took advantage of the clusters of pedestrians early on and after checkpoint 7, you should have enough time to make it to the end.
Follow the GPS route from checkpoint 8, and you’ll get there with time to spare.
Trail Blazer 3—Angel: Fire (#56)
Location: Yearwood
Difficulty: Hard
Checkpoints: 12
Starting Time Limit: 0:30
Cash Earned: $6,000
Respect Earned: 600
Rewards: 2% Luchadores Gang District Control—$71 per hour
This activity is actually rather difficult. There are many twists and turns deep in the suburbs, and it’s easy to get distracted and miss a turn, which can cost you the win if you haven’t been able to build up a good time bonus between checkpoints. You don’t necessarily want to drive slow, but you do want to check the GPS once you pass a checkpoint to have a better idea of where you are going. Otherwise you can waste time turning around to get back to a missed point. Because this race has larger gaps between checkpoints, you want to hit any large groups of people you can find. They don’t reliably appear in the same places all the time, but when you see them, make a beeline for them.
Try to build up the clock early on with the pedestrians on the sidewalk before the first checkpoint, but be careful about bouncing into the buildings on either side of the street. You really can’t afford to slow down on this mission.
From checkpoint 2, you can actually turn down an alley that leads directly to checkpoint 3, with a flame that will take out some Luchadores vehicles to boost your bonus.
Checkpoint 6 can be easy to fly past if you’re in a hurry. Keep one eye on the minimap to know when you need to turn into it, it’s next to a house near a short hill.
Checkpoint 8 leads you down another alley with multiple flames to hit, and with 9 on your right just as you exit.
Checkpoint 10 can be a bit deceptive. It lies within an alley. If you have followed the GPS route from 9, just before reaching the turn it tells you to take, duck into a small lot on the right, pass 10, and be back on the main path without slowing down much.
It’s pretty much smooth sailing from checkpoint 10 on, as long as you stay on the route. With that done, you have completed all of Angel’s special training and might stand a chance against Killbane!