Trials HD

DLC Review from Matt - Friday, 02 October 2009 @ 5:24pm

If you're not familiar with it, Trials HD is the Xbox Live upgrade of a PC game Trials 2: Second Edition. Trials HD is part of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade.

Like all Xbox Live Arcade titles, Trials HD offers a demo, and the demo is quite an impressive sales tool. It's pretty hard not to have fun. You have to aggressively try not to have fun with Trials HD's demo to not enjoy it.

Trials HD is a physics based motorbike racer in the 2.5 dimensions that are currently popular with developers who can't afford that extra 0.5 dimension. The game is played on a track that runs along the middle of three panes. The term “physics based” is used a bit loosely. It's “physics based” in the same way that movies like Amityville Horror are “based on actual events”. In otherwords it's made up nonsense that's supposed to be fun rather than accurate. It's the kind of physics that's more about blowing stuff up and bouncing around than any level of representing the true riding experience. A lot of the physics abuse occurs in the form of physics based puzzle solving, and a lot is more of the leaping through death-defying stunts doing flips that are only survived due to significant amounts of luck.

Guess who else has giant balls? Yeah, that's right...

Control is a simple thing. The right and triggers are accelerator and brake respectively, and the thumbstick handles your lean. The rest is up to you, and it's surprising how much flexibility that simple and intuitive control scheme provides with only a short play.

Graphics are solid as well. Trials HD has a gloss to everything that suits the style of the game, polished and crisp, without being overly fussy on detail. In particular there are fantastic fire effects, with physics based explosions and lots of groovy shattering. Some of the jumps require such tight control that success is often as much a matter of accident as skill, and the results of this are a kind of chaotic careening gameplay that's both entertaining and exhilarating, and the phrase “yeah, I meant to do that” will come up in conversation at least once if other people are around.

Trials HD promises high flying fun and boy does it deliver!

On a motorbike on fire in the air - awesome

Until it gets bored with delivering, and decides to bore you stupid. The earlier levels see you leaping through fire, risking death and worse on insane jumps and potentially (hilariously) fatal somersaults. Later levels see you try for an hour or more to hop over a rock. Though in fairness, it's a very nice rock.

Closely followed by another rock.

About half way through the game's “medium” difficulty level things suddenly get very difficult. There are a couple of different types of difficult. There is challenging but all the more rewarding due to its difficulty. Then there's pointlessly and frustratingly difficult, where you finally achieve some seemingly impossible task only to be confronted with a slightly harder one.

Trials HD looks great, full of fire, explosions and sadistic manglings, until it bogs itself down in technicality it's a lot of fun. Many people will enjoy it a lot more than I did. There may be a lot who enjoy the satisfaction of conquering the harder levels. I just found that personally I got bored and frustrated. Frustration, for me, is a killer. I can cope with challenge, but once things get to the level of frustrating I have very little tolerance for it.

Hey, hey, do you wanna screw?! No? K.

I am OK with the idea of the tight technical tracks, and have no objection to them in principle. The only issue I have is that this is the only thing in the later levels. It really needed to mix things up, provide some difficult technique tracks, alternating with big jumps and fun physics puzzle based tracks. It doesn't, and when those things go, the fun goes with them.

Trials HD deserves a play through the demo at least. If you like what you find there you should seriously consider a purchase, though be warned that things may start to slow down in the full game with a focus on bunnyhops instead of flying leaps. But if nothing else the more physics based puzzle play is a hell of a lot of fun, and may well be worth the price of admission alone.

Pros

Can be a lot of fun, especially in the physics based and speed based puzzles. Slick and well presented. The minigames are enjoyable for a while. Has that "one more go" addictiveness.

Cons

Can get very frustrating. I think it should have been called Trials And Errors, as you seem to spend a lot of time doing the same thing over and over until you fluke it.