Trials HD

Ported to the 360 and improved in every way

When Red Lynx originally released their first Trials game on the PC, it became a bit of a cult hit and deservedly so. Mixing noisy motorbikes with some seriously realistic physics and ragdoll effects, Trials felt more like a puzzle game than a trials simulation and was horribly addictive.

The game spawned a sequel on PC that was even better, but it’s taken untill now for the game to finally hit consoles – and how! The Xbox Live Arcade version of Trials, named Trials HD, lines up amongst the “Summer of Arcade” titles, and though it costs 1200 points which is still quite hefty by Xbox Live standards, it’s worth every single penny.

Geeks of a certain age might remember an old TV programme that used to go out around tea time on BBC2, called Kick Start. It gave us Geeks the chance to scoff and giggle at posh kids as they attempted to traverse tricky obstacles on trials motorbikes. Often the only real reason to watch the programme (apart from the fantastic dulcet tones of Blue Peter alumni Peter Purves) was to see said posh kids fall off high and slippery logs right onto their noggins.

Kick Start was the inspiration for a couple of utterly sublime games on the Spectrum and Commodore 64 and if Shaun Southern was still making games today, he’d probably take one look at Trials HD, pack up his coding crib sheets and go home.

Trials HD is everything you could possibly wish for when it comes to wanting a highly polished successor to those games. For starters, it looks absolutely smashing with some of the best lighting, animation and subtle specular effects seen on the Xbox 360 so far. It looks real enough to leap off the screen at you. Every tiny little detail from the superbly rendered motorbikes and riders to stuff like dusty fingerprints and graffiti drawn on the windows of the huge hangars you blast your motorbike through just add to the game’s spectacle.

Thankfully it’s not all just eye candy. The game is instantly pick-up-and-playable and you’ve really only got to worry about three controls; right-trigger for accelerate, Left-trigger for brake and the left analogue stick for changing your rider’s stance.

Trials HD starts off breaking you in with some nice easy levels to get you used to the controls.  In fact, in each of the trials sections, you are given a brief tutorial level that shows you what will be required in the section ahead.  You can see straight away that the physics and ragdoll effects of the first game have been improved upon, to the point where practically everything thrown into the level you’re playing can pretty much unseat you from your saddle and cause you to lose control. A fine sense of balance, and using the analogue triggers with a deft touch are definitely the order of the day with Trials HD, so charging ahead full throttle will only get you so far.

As the game progresses in Race Mode, you’ll start swearing and cursing at the developers for putting together some of the most fiendish level designs you could possibly dream up.  One of the best is simply called “Dreams” and is a nightmarish landscape of platforms suspended in mid air, impossibly twisted planks of wood seemingly hanging in space, and some really nasty vertigo-inducing drops.

Getting gold in any of the races will unlock lots of goodies like new bikes, extra challenges and other rewards. In fact the game’s not just limited to straight-out timed races.  Challenge Mode is an entirely different ball game, consisting of several “mini-game” challenges that allow you to see just how far you can fling your rider from his handlebars, or see how long you can last riding your motorbike inside a giant steel mesh sphere.

Because your progress is constantly measured against your friends, it becomes something of an addiction just to see how many of your pals you can beat in each of the modes. In Race Mode you’re provided with a rather neat little speed meter at the top of the screen that shows you how you’re progressing against your nearest competitor. Great little touches like this show that Red Lynx haven’t just sat back and done a straight port of the PC version, they’ve seriously improved the game in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to list them.

Just when you think you’ve got your money’s worth out of the game, there’s more to play with. Trials HD also contains a fully-featured level editor and creator, and Red Lynx have stressed that everything you see in the game’s race levels can actually be built in the editor. You’ll believe that too when you start using it, because it’s one of the most intuitive and easy to use editors I think I’ve ever seen in a console game. Every object and obstacle can be accurately placed, dropped into the scene, manipulated in 3D along several planes (that bit works beautifully like a proper 3D design package) so with ten minutes of tinkering around, you can make something daft enough to race your bike through.

Better than that, if you’re feeling particularly generous, you can upload your creations to Xbox Live and let other players toy with your creations to see if they can beat your times and scores. Seeing all this in action just makes me even sadder that Trackmania’s creators never saw fit to do a console version of their game, because if they did something like this, it would be an instant day-1 purchase.

There’s virtually nothing to pick on in Trials HD. The replays are a bit naff and you don’t get to do much with the camera in replay mode other than jiggle around a bit so unfortunately you can’t view your glorious record-breaking run through a level from different angles.  This minor quibble aside, there’s so much value in the game for 1200 points that it should be glued into your 360′s DVD drive for quite some time to come.  It was quite something to see 22 friends on my Xbox Live list all playing the game at the same time last night on release day.

My advice would be to get yourself some points and get this as soon as possible.  It’s not only one of the best Xbox Live Arcade titles ever, it’s also a front runner for game of the year. Some players might find it tough and frustrating but once you get to grips with the mechanics of the game and how the simple controls allow you to perform some truly outrageous stunts, you’ll be hooked, trust me.