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Review - Trials Evolution
09:59, 20th Apr 2012
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Trials HD is, without doubt, one of the great success stories of Xbox Live Arcade. Released by relatively unknown Finnish developer RedLynx, the game slowly gained momentum after hitting XBLA and eventually sold over two million copies through the good word of mouth it received from critics and fans alike. Ever since, RedLynx has been working on a follow-up – despite being bought by mega-publisher Ubisoft halfway through development – that it always promised would be bigger, better and… well, more. A promise too far? Hardly. Trials Evolution promises all of the stunt fuelled motorcycle thrills from the previous game but on an even grander scale and thankfully, it delivers everything it says it will with style.
As with Trials HD, the aim of the game is to guide your motorbike over obstacles that slowly become more and more impenetrable as the game progresses. By shifting your weight forwards and backwards you can make your bike perform tricks like wheelies and bunny hops, enabling you to cross gaps even wider than John Prescott’s waistline and somehow traverse vertical slopes. The physics in the game try to be as realistic as they can be but unlike, for example, Angry Birds – in which you can do the same thing five times and get completely different results on each occasion – Trials Evolution manages to keep things consistent throughout. Bottom line: once you pass an obstacle, as long as you know exactly HOW you did it, you’ll be able to easily repeat it next time.
While the gameplay remains practically identical though, the steep learning curve of Trials HD has been combated here with ‘driving license’ tutorial levels that teach you new moves. You must pass these before moving onto the more difficult stages, ensuring that players understand some of the complexities of the game before literally coming face-to-face with brick walls.
Evolution also further expands on Trials HD by taking the bikes outdoors for the first time. Rather than being confined to warehouses and samey looking tracks built out of bits of wood and tyres, you now visit a plethora of different environments including rocky mountains, war torn battlegrounds and sewage plants to name just a few. One particularly epic course sees day turn to night and a storm break loose as you progress; another pays homage to a popular indie game famed for its monochrome, film noir art style. There are 60 base tracks in total and almost all of them offer a unique environment and experience, although that number can obviously grow massively once you take the online community's efforts into account… but more on that in a minute.
Tracks now twist and turn away from the screen, and at the end of each course there lies an imaginative and often hilarious deadly fate for your rider. None of these things affect the gameplay whatsoever, but they all come together to give the game much more of a personality and sense of humour than Trials HD ever had. The difficulty of the later levels is just as frustrating, but now at least there are plenty of other elements in the game that will keep you smiling even when you fault for the 100th time.
The only thing that does fall a bit flat are the new customisation options. Using money you win from beating each course you can buy new helmets, shirts and bike parts, but while none of them affect your performance (which is fine, as that would unbalance the game), there’s also nothing really flamboyant or fun to buy. Me personally, I have about $100,000 in the kitty and can see nothing appealing to spend it on. Slightly altering the style or colour of my helmet is pretty mundane, but riding my bike wearing a cowboy hat or skull mask could have been a lot more entertaining. Certainly, a trick has been missed here.
Perhaps the most important new feature is the multiplayer, which offers both local and online options. Depending on the mode you choose, you can change the experience from being a four way race to the finish (with a set-up reminiscent of the Nintendo classic Excitebike) or compete as a lone bike with only your opponents' gamertag appearing as a ghost on-screen to chart their progress. Ultimately though, each of the four modes boils down to who's the quickest to finish the tracks and while it can be fun to test your skills against others online, the main game is always much more appealing.
In any case, the popular time trial feature from Trials HD also returns; when connected to Xbox Live and playing the single player game you will be shown each of your friends’ best times on the courses. Getting the best time to beat your friends means you could be revisiting each track multiple times, if only to have bragging rights next time you see them.
Best of all though, the comprehensive level editor that's been provided – which is exactly the same one as was used by RedLynx themselves when making the game, according to the developer – is so powerful, it's likely that the game's going to have an almost limitless lifespan. Sure, I haven’t a clue where to begin with it but without doubt the more creative and gifted fans out there will be building some astonishing levels. And not surprisingly, these can be uploaded and shared with everyone else who has the game, meaning the potential for new content and even more brutishly difficult levels will be there for a long time to come. To be fair, there's plenty of content and longevity to the game as it is but with the added user-created stuff, you could get so much mileage out of it that the 1,200MSP price point almost seems like an injustice.
As with Trials HD, the aim of the game is to guide your motorbike over obstacles that slowly become more and more impenetrable as the game progresses. By shifting your weight forwards and backwards you can make your bike perform tricks like wheelies and bunny hops, enabling you to cross gaps even wider than John Prescott’s waistline and somehow traverse vertical slopes. The physics in the game try to be as realistic as they can be but unlike, for example, Angry Birds – in which you can do the same thing five times and get completely different results on each occasion – Trials Evolution manages to keep things consistent throughout. Bottom line: once you pass an obstacle, as long as you know exactly HOW you did it, you’ll be able to easily repeat it next time.
While the gameplay remains practically identical though, the steep learning curve of Trials HD has been combated here with ‘driving license’ tutorial levels that teach you new moves. You must pass these before moving onto the more difficult stages, ensuring that players understand some of the complexities of the game before literally coming face-to-face with brick walls.
Evolution also further expands on Trials HD by taking the bikes outdoors for the first time. Rather than being confined to warehouses and samey looking tracks built out of bits of wood and tyres, you now visit a plethora of different environments including rocky mountains, war torn battlegrounds and sewage plants to name just a few. One particularly epic course sees day turn to night and a storm break loose as you progress; another pays homage to a popular indie game famed for its monochrome, film noir art style. There are 60 base tracks in total and almost all of them offer a unique environment and experience, although that number can obviously grow massively once you take the online community's efforts into account… but more on that in a minute.
Tracks now twist and turn away from the screen, and at the end of each course there lies an imaginative and often hilarious deadly fate for your rider. None of these things affect the gameplay whatsoever, but they all come together to give the game much more of a personality and sense of humour than Trials HD ever had. The difficulty of the later levels is just as frustrating, but now at least there are plenty of other elements in the game that will keep you smiling even when you fault for the 100th time.
The only thing that does fall a bit flat are the new customisation options. Using money you win from beating each course you can buy new helmets, shirts and bike parts, but while none of them affect your performance (which is fine, as that would unbalance the game), there’s also nothing really flamboyant or fun to buy. Me personally, I have about $100,000 in the kitty and can see nothing appealing to spend it on. Slightly altering the style or colour of my helmet is pretty mundane, but riding my bike wearing a cowboy hat or skull mask could have been a lot more entertaining. Certainly, a trick has been missed here.
Perhaps the most important new feature is the multiplayer, which offers both local and online options. Depending on the mode you choose, you can change the experience from being a four way race to the finish (with a set-up reminiscent of the Nintendo classic Excitebike) or compete as a lone bike with only your opponents' gamertag appearing as a ghost on-screen to chart their progress. Ultimately though, each of the four modes boils down to who's the quickest to finish the tracks and while it can be fun to test your skills against others online, the main game is always much more appealing.
In any case, the popular time trial feature from Trials HD also returns; when connected to Xbox Live and playing the single player game you will be shown each of your friends’ best times on the courses. Getting the best time to beat your friends means you could be revisiting each track multiple times, if only to have bragging rights next time you see them.
Best of all though, the comprehensive level editor that's been provided – which is exactly the same one as was used by RedLynx themselves when making the game, according to the developer – is so powerful, it's likely that the game's going to have an almost limitless lifespan. Sure, I haven’t a clue where to begin with it but without doubt the more creative and gifted fans out there will be building some astonishing levels. And not surprisingly, these can be uploaded and shared with everyone else who has the game, meaning the potential for new content and even more brutishly difficult levels will be there for a long time to come. To be fair, there's plenty of content and longevity to the game as it is but with the added user-created stuff, you could get so much mileage out of it that the 1,200MSP price point almost seems like an injustice.
VERDICT
Trials Evolution may keep the same challenging gameplay as its predecessor, but the advances it makes in almost every other department help it become a much more fun and accessible game. True, there's actually been very little change made to the gameplay itself, but the series has undoubtedly reached the next level promised by the title of this game. Thoroughly recommended.
9/10
