Trials HD (Xbox 360) Review

Trials HD is the latest instalment in the ‘Trials’ series of games, this being the third one. Trials originally started as a flash game which was hosted through numerous mini-game sites after being quite a hit online, someone had the incredibly intelligent idea of turning Trials into more a ‘proper’ game, thus came Trials 2: Second Edition. Trials 2 came out on March 1^st, 2008 as digital download only. And here we are today, the latest game in the Trials series, Trials HD which is once again a download only game but this time only for Xbox Live Arcade.

Trials HD made its Xbox Live debut through the ‘Summer of Arcade’ program which Microsoft hold on Xbox Live, this is where they release some of the biggest games that XBLA sees during the year. We’ve already had the release of ‘Sploxion Man, Turtles in Time re-shelled and the soon to be released Shadow Complex. Personally, this is the only game I’ve been looking forward to on Xbox Live Arcade ever since Geometry Wars 2 released last year. I was a total fiend for Trials 2: Second Edition on Steam, spending literally 50+ hours on such a simple, old-school game.

The general idea behind Trials (as you can kind-of assume from it’s name) is about the Motocross and BMX sport Trial riding although the game takes it to a major extreme, where the objective is to simple get to the end of the level. It’s not as simple as it sounds though, between where you start and where the level ends, there is a whole course to try and defeat, with massive jumps, walls of crap (hypothetical crap) big dumps of explosives and physics based puzzles. And all of these puzzles can be beaten by simple leaning forwards and backwards on your bike, but trust me, it’s not as simple as that especially when you start the harder levels which you unlock as you progress through the game.

Trials HD is one of those games which will torture you trying to complete. It’s not like Ninja Gaiden hard, where it’s simply the computer fucking you up due to the enemies you’re playing against. It’s the sort of hard where you’re fucking up because of you not doing the ‘puzzle’ properly; there are times when you’ll do the exact same thing 30-40 times just because you aren’t hitting the jump at the right angle. The weird thing is though; you’ll constantly keep trying until you beat it as it only takes one quick button hit (B) to restart from the most recent checkpoint. Unlike the PC version of Trials 2: Second Edition, there is a limit to how long you can spend on a level which is 30 minutes and the most amount of faults you’re allowed per level is 500. It may seem like a huge number, but when you start doing the extreme levels (which I have finished just before I started this review) the 500 fault cap and 30 minute level cap isn’t actually that much just because of how annoying some of the jumps being; missing a landing by a few millimetres.

If you do manage to finish all the beginner, easy, medium, hard and extreme courses there is also the new ‘tournaments’ mode which will pit you against a set number of tracks in a series. But that’s not all, folks, there are also new mini skill games which you’ll unlock as you progress through the single player tracks and depending on the medal you get; bronze, silver, gold and platinum will speed up unlocking the game modes. In total, there are 12 skill games like a hill climb where the goal is to simply get as high as you can, but there are also more unique game modes like your rider being on fire and you’ve got to see how far you can get him across the track before your rider is burnt to death.

For the ever-growing crowd who like creating there own courses (which was a feature that really should have been in Second Edition) it has been put in Trials HD, and put in incredibly well. The amounts of things you can make with this feature are beyond anything you can imagine. Every single level you from the campaign you could easily remake in this creator as you have access to every object, physics property and lighting. When a game has a really in-depth creator such as the one in Trials HD (and other titles like Far Cry 2) you’d expect it to have a decent file sharing system too? Well, we’ve came to a slight problem there though, the game only allows you to share with your direct friends on Live, meaning you’re only going to be able to share with up to 100 people – chances are, only one-tenth of them would of actually picked it up and only a few of them will be willing to put the time into the game to actually make a level worth checking out.

Even though the game doesn’t exactly support traditional multiplayer, it does have leader boards for every track and skill game. When you slide over a track, your friend leader board near-enough instantly appears which causing competition between everyone on your friends who own the game, as it tells you both your and their time they set on the track which you can’t help but try and beat to send them abusive messages about how much they suck.

Final Thoughts

So far over the second Summer of Arcade season Microsoft have held for Xbox Live, Trials HD is the best one so far and is the best arcade games that have been released over the Xbox Live Arcade service. If you’re a perfectionist, say goodbye to sunlight as every time you finish a track the game gives you a medal depending on your performance and the time needed for the model above. Trials 2: Second Edition sucked away a hell of a lot of my spare time and Trials HD has already done that. Hopefully they’ll patch the file sharing and allow you too share with everyone and have some form of search function to sort the crap out from the good ones, once that happens, I don’t see me ever needing another Arcade game until they release a sequel.

Find more Xbox 360 reviews over at Test Freaks!

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