A few weeks ago, before Xbox Live’s “Summer of Arcade” started I was rather sure of the games I wanted out of the bunch. I was definitely going to get ‘Splosion Man, Turtles in Time, and Shadow Complex. I was planning on getting Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on the PS3 and I had no interest in Trials HD. My plan has changed a bit as the “Summer of Arcade” has progressed. I didn’t end up getting ‘Splosion Man, I got Turtles in Time and was a little disappointed by it, and Shadow Complex comes out this coming Wednesday. The other change in my plan was my status on Trials HD. I didn’t really care about a motorcycle tricks game. I thought it looked like a mix between Pain and Excite Bike (I don’t know why). But, then a magical thing happened, I tried the trial version of Trials HD. I thought it was easy to pick up and really fun. Within five minutes of riding the available tracks in the trial I was on Amazon.com buying an unlock code.
YAY:
- You know when they say a game is ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’ ? This is definitely one of those games. The first group of tracks take it easy on you and the game does a good of teaching you how to perform various things you will need to be able to do to pass the tracks. There are five different difficulty levels, each with a group of tracks, every one except for expert has a tutorial track to go along with it. There are also tournaments, which are just a few of the tracks played one after the other, and scored as one large stage.
- This is simple addictive fun at it’s finest. After i used the unlock code I started playing Trials HD right away, I played it for four hours straight. I then went on to play it for six hours in a nine hour period. I was hooked. If you’re the type of gamer that likes a challenge, and you also like to top your previous scores, than this game is for you. Seeing how high you can get on the leaderboards will also keep you occupied if you’re a competition junkie.
- Even if you fall a lot it rarely gets frustrating; it’s quite humorous to watch. I was laughing well beyond the tenth time I accidentally nicked an explosive barrel with my tire and sent the rider flying through the air.
- If you do get stuck on a certain part, you have the ability to watch the replay of the top players on the leaderboard. It shows you full video of the run as if you were playing, along with the buttons they pressed to do what they did, shown on the bottom right of the screen.
- If you want to take a break from riding tracks for a while and are the creative type, there’s a fully functional track editor where you can make and share your own custom tracks. There are also twelve skill games that task you to complete various goals, such as seeing how long you can stay upright inside a giant metal ball, or to see how many bones you can break in a single crash.
NAY:
- Remember when I said difficult to master? I wasn’t joking. I don’t know how some people do it; most of the hard tracks are really challenging, and the expert tracks seem near impossible at some points. In order to completely finish this game you need to be an extremely patient zen master, because unless you’re lucky or very good, you’re going to have to hit ‘restart from checkpoint’ a lot.
- Though there is a track creator, everytime I go to get tracks it tells me that none of my friends have created any tracks. If you can only get tracks that your friends have created that’s a pretty big issue.
I didn’t expect Trials HD to be much before I tried it, but I think this might be one of the surpirse hits of the summer, if not the year in general. I ‘m not saying it’s going to best any of the games we listed as one of the top ten of 2009 so far, but it’s definitely on the level of addicting fun games like Peggle in my opinion. If you tried the demo and liked it, buy it, there’s only more great gameplay to follow. If you haven’t tried it yet and you own a 360, you owe it to yourself to give Trials HD a shot.
