Reviews
Some games are just plain hard. Hard to the point where you have no doubt that the computer is being cheap or the game design is broken. By which time you’ve either turned the game off or your controller has been launched into the screen of your TV. That’s not a good thing. There’s two types of ‘hard’ in my book. Frustratingly Cheap Hard and This Game Owns Me Hard. The former is bad game design while the latter is genius. The type of challenging gameplay that repeatedly reams you over yet you continue to push at it, knowing it’s your own lack of skills that have ceased your progress. At one point midway through the game, at one particular jump, I tallied up over 200 retries. Yep, that’s over 200 attempts at making the one jump. I never want to do that jump again, expecting there is no way on God’s earth that it could possibly get any more difficult, until I arrived at the next jump… And yet I push on. Must. Pass. This. Jump. I’m pushing the retry button on my gamepad more often than if I was playing a shoot ‘em up. Trials HD is an XBLA revamp of the original PC motocross games where you control a motorbike tackling an obstacle course of jumps and hazards. It’s a side-scrolling physics-based game on a 2D plane where finesse, balance and momentum are keys to success. Trials HD may be missing the A and the R in its title but that’s because it’s dropped them like big hairy testicles and swaying them around in your face.
I must apologise for the scary intro but that’s a condensation of my thoughts after playing the game for 5 hours straight. Thankfully the game does ease you into the controls and physics model. The controls couldn’t be any simpler. Brake and throttle on the triggers, left stick moves your body weight back and forth. Soon you’ll learn the way the bikes handle, the way your body shifts it weight affecting the bike on the ground and in the air, the way applying power shifts weight over the rear wheel, the way different surfaces and landing angles affect traction, momentum and balance. It’s a brilliantly executed cohesive system and if you’re a physics model geek you’ll love exploring the nuances in this game. The seemingly at odds action of going up a steep ramp by shifting your weight forward so you don’t fall back and still have enough weight over the back wheel so enough throttle can be applied to climb the ramp is a superbly realized balancing act of Newton’s laws. The one caveat I have is that the act of shifting your weight is locked in 3 distinct steps - lean back, forward or straight. This digital state of body balance seems out of place in the intricately analogous physics model. And the game does suffer for it in certain instances when I instinctively only want a slight shift in weight forward but then it’s only “full forward” so I need to pull back but then it’s “straight up” before going to “full back” so I’m bucking like a rodeo horse. You do learn to work with this system, as the changing of body weight seems to go through a progressive change before settling into either of the 3 set states.
The main game is set around a series of tracks ranging from Easy all the way to Extreme. Passing each track earns you a Bronze medal while passing it in a certain time or without fault earns you Silver or Gold. Medals will unlock more tracks and let you progress as well as unlocking Skill games. These mini-games range from going the furthest distance while balancing on a steel ball to breaking as many bones in your body after hurling your biker into the scenery. They’re a fun distraction from the main campaign and Leaderboards keep track of your XBL friends as well. During the main game, your closest friend’s progress on that track is updated in real time so you know how far in front or behind you are compared to your peers. Finally, there’s Tournament mode which combines a series of tracks and times your progress as a whole. If you manage to beat all the stages and get bored of the 50 pre-built tracks (only gaming Gods need apply) there’s a Track Editor which lets you build your own track and share with your friends. It’s the same engine as the developers used to create the game’s tracks and although it’s a bit clunky to use, those patient enough will find plenty of scope to create some awesomely detailed custom tracks. It’s a shame you can only share amongst your friends however as opening it up globally with a ratings system would have pushed this game into the upper echelons of community sharing and tapped into some bright level editors and their creations.
There isn’t much to fault in the game’s execution of its core idea. The graphics are sharp with some great environments and the camera alters its perspective accordingly to portray some vertigo inducing jumps. Different bikes have their own engine sounds and you’ll hear the subtle differences when your tyres roll from wood to metal. The courses and environments are dynamic as well, ranging from crumbling platforms to areas littered with exploding barrels where you need to tip toe through. The ERB (Exploding Red Barrel) is recast in this game as your main nemesis as the slightest touch will launch your biker skyward. Some tracks provide multiple paths to the exit and can contain hidden pathways so it pays to explore as well. Watching the ragdoll physics at work is fun and sometimes you’ll launch your biker into oblivion just for the heck of it. It’s a good thing that restarts are immediate and assigned to the B button and Back button (either from the last checkpoint or from the beginning of the course). Although the game is almost sadistic in its difficulty, its also one of the most rewarding and you have the option to watch replays of anyone in the Leaderboards to see how they passed the track with a display of their control inputs. There is no doubt that this game will break you and have you crying in a foetal position. There is a slight worry that the average gamer will reach a certain point midway and give up due to a seemingly impossible section of the course. Other than that, it’s simply gaming nirvana.
Xboxzone Score: 8.8/10
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