Forget the training wheels. Want a real man's motorcycle game? You've got it. Trials HD is one of the hardest motorcycle games you'll ever play. Like the classic Excitebike, you'll spend your time in two dimensions, maneuvering your motorcycle through a variety of obstacles. There are fifty courses in addition to a variety of mini-games, so masochistic gamers will have plenty of time to burn rubber. If you tire of the game's difficult courses, there's also the option of creating courses that you can share with your friends. Some people will love messing around with the course editor, but I'd imagine that most people playing Trials will have the most "fun" with professionally developed levels littered with obstacles. For those who have the patience of a Zen master, you'll find plenty to love, but everyone else will feel like they're running into a brick wall.
When you begin playing Trials, you'll see a brief description of the game's controls in the menu, but it's far from adequate. The only way you'll learn how to play this two-dimensional-cycler is by doing the dirty work yourself. You'll want to begin with Trials HD's main mode, which is a series of courses divided into five levels of difficulty. Each level of difficulty has a "tutorial", but it doesn't feel like you're actually learning anything. See, these so-called tutorials have controller diagrams on the wall that illustrate what buttons to press in sequence, but they really aren't very helpful, especially when you're flying by at high speeds. What you'll want to do instead is to mess around with the controller. Mostly, you'll be leaning the left analog stick back and forth to perform jumps and balance your ride. As for pressing buttons, you'll quickly become familiar with the B and Back buttons. B will quickly return you to the nearest checkpoint without having to bring up a menu, and Back will bring you to the beginning of the course. Both are quite useful, as you'll constantly be repeating segments of the game's fifty courses.
Trials HD starts out easy enough in the first few levels with only minor ramps, but you're still likely to slip and fall. Balance is often key when playing extreme sports games, but it's absolutely essential in Trials HD. You'll have to constantly pay attention to how far you're leaning forward, or how far back you're going. In Trials, you lose by flipping your bike over, and this will happen more often than not, especially when you're starting out. The game's beginner bikes are relatively slow, so you won't have as many problems on the first few courses, but you'll still have to pay attention to the slopes of the game's various ramps. If you make a huge jump, it's important that you quickly position your bike correctly; otherwise, you'll pull off an impressive face plant. You have to be very precise when you press the analog stick a certain direction, however, because it's easy to lean too far forward and make your bike tip over.
Once you progress beyond Trials' first two difficulty levels, you'll realize what a joke they were. They may have seemed difficult at the time, but when people mention Trials' high level of difficulty, that's not what they're referring to. They're talking about the last three difficulty levels, where you'll find many of the game's courses. Trials starts out simple enough with small ramps, but once you progress far enough, you'll have to ride down elevators lined with explosives, ride through corkscrews and land properly, while keeping enough speed to make another jump, and you'll climb seemingly impassable slopes. Explosives are a common feature of many of the game's courses, and you'll have to ride over them slowly, or make impressive leaps to clear them. Running into explosives will send you packing to the last checkpoint, but the first time you hit them, it's fun to watch the exaggerated animation that ensues.
Even more difficult than dodging explosives is landing on platforms with a mixture of slopes. Some slopes are incredibly steep, while others have varying angles, so you'll constantly be repositioning your bike and launching your jumps at different heights. Like 'Splosion man, you have to memorize patterns, but in Trials, it's often difficult to discern how to overcome obstacles. Even a renowned physicist like Stephen Hawking would probably have a difficult time figuring out the physics engine found in Trials. You'll have to constantly experiment, and pray in order to pass the game's most treacherous segments. I managed to complete all but three or four levels, and in a couple of them, I managed eating up all five hundred of my faults.
In Trials HD, you have a limited amount of faults in addition to a time limit. You receive a fault simply by flipping your bike or crashing into an obstacle. Sometimes, Trials HD has glitches where you can actually roll over your bike without it counting as a fault, but this seldom occurs. Five hundred faults is a lot to blow through, but chances are, you will find yourself dying repeatedly on the game's later courses. It'd be nice if checkpoints were a little more frequent, but I suppose that Trial's level of challenge was intentional. At least you're able to quickly return to the previous checkpoint by pressing the B button.
If you want to obtain one of Trials' medals however (Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum), you'll have to clear the course without many faults, and within a certain time limit. Doing this will enable you to unlock many of the game's mini-games, but this is a nearly impossible feat on Trials' later levels. Each level also ranks you on the leaderboards, and luckily, you're able to instantly view how you performed in comparison to other players. This feature can make you feel bad if you suck, but it feels great when you're one of the few people to have accomplished a difficult level.
Trials HD is obviously a masochist's dream, but is it a worthy purchase at $15 for other players? I'd only recommend it if you love motorcycle games and aren't a completist. The slippery and poorly explained controls are rather frustrating, so it'll take too much effort for most people to master. You could buy Trials for the level editor, but I wouldn't recommend it, since the interface feels limited and far less flexible than what's offered in a game like Little Big Planet. You can create some decent levels, but it would have been nice if you could instantly place objects like corkscrews in your levels without having to create them yourself. I also couldn't figure out how to get triggers working, so I was unable to figure out how to make walls explode to create new paths. I realize that Trials is only a downloadable game and is limited to racing, but for being one of its main selling points, I expected a simple, yet flexible level editor. Unfortunately, it's convoluted, and you can only share your creations with your friends. If you're like me and don't have a huge friends list, it's unlikely that you'll find user generated courses, so you're stuck with the professional offerings.
Even though Trials is visually spectacular and includes creative courses and gameplay mechanics, it's too difficult to recommend to most people at $15. If you were already planning on buying all Summer of Arcade games, it's not a bad deal, because of Microsoft's 800 point rebate, but if you're purchasing this alone, $15 seems like a bit much. Ten dollars would have been a fairer asking price with Trials' enjoyable mini-games and devious levels, but it's absurd charging $15 when there are much better downloadable offerings like, 'Splosion Man. I happen to be one of those crazy gamers who enjoys a smattering of difficult games, so I bestowed Trials with a decent score, but completists and casual gamers will want to steer clear. If you don't mind repeating level segments hundreds of times and like motorcycles, give Trials HD a shot; otherwise, you'll probably want to stick with some of this summer's simpler and more satisfying titles.
Pros:
· Impressive visuals and lighting effects
· Completing a difficult course feels great
· Certain stunts will blow your mind
· Leaderboards accompany the end of each level
· Plenty of well-thought out courses
· Once you learn to handle your bike, Trials is thrilling
Cons:
· The level editor is convoluted
· The butt rock soundtrack feels uninspired
· Slippery controls
· You'll have to repeat certain level segments hundreds of times
· The physics engine is difficult to comprehend
· Some courses are absurdly difficult
. Certain slopes seem impossible to climb