Speed, Flip and Crash to your Hearts Content.

by Shadow Wave:

©2009 Ben Cadwallader

If you’re like me, in moments of extreme boredom you have resorted to playing an online flash game.  Dirt Bike; one of the many flash games was my game of choice. Where you simply controlled a 2d dirt bike and guided it over an obstacle course, which was extremely addictive and fun and sometimes very frustrating.

Trials HD, developed by RedLynx takes that awesomeness and times’ it by 10, bringing HD graphics, physics, level creators, frustration and fun to the Xbox 360 console as a fully fledged arcade title. This is a game that everyone can enjoy if they give it a go as its so simple to play.

Essentially the goal is simple, get your bike across the 2d plane obstacle course and cross the finish line without crashing, and thanks to its very simple controls, almost anyone can give this a go, the right trigger accelerates, left trigger brakes, and the left joystick adjusts the angle of the bike. And that’s it, 4 buttons, this is a ‘pick up and play’ game at its finest.

• Trials HD Trailer

Unlike the flash games though, Trials HD incorporates a very helpful checkpoint system that will let you continue from a spot in the course which would be very close to where you crashed, which reduces the frustration by a mile. Unfortunately, if your trying to earn unlockables and get on the leaderboard, the checkpoint system might not be your thing.  Because to earn those top points you must beat the entire course without dying once, and do it in record time.

A checkpoint system

On great bonus is that Trials HD incorporates a very helpful checkpoint system.

There are 5 difficulties, each level ups the difficulty quite significantly, making those perfect runs increasingly difficult to achieve, and in the harder levels it will be literally a test of will power to see if you will give up and be happy with that silver medal, or if you will keep trying over and over again to see if you can reach the gold.

Thankfully there are almost no loading screens in this game, which is especially helpful when your playing those harder levels because when you die, you will instantly be able to try again with no pain of an annoying load screen.  The fact you can instantly restart your run makes this game extremely addictive.

Besides the standard race/obstacle courses, there are quite a few other mini games you can play, such as seeing how long you can survive in a ball cage, or see how far you can send your driver off a large jump. etc.  They are no where near as addictive as the main game, but its quite fun for a short time.

Leaderboard’s will help keep you playing as you will want to try and beat their course run times, while you are playing you can see your friends progress in a little bar above as if it were in real time, and check out the full leaderboard list at the end of each level, and it all loads extremely fast, its great.  Sadly though there is no ‘true’ multiplayer in this game.

What . . no multiplayer!

Sadly though, one disappointment is that there is no ‘true’ multiplayer in this Trials HD.

Level editors are something I avoid, as my creations tend to always suck. But for those with time to dedicate to it you have the potential to create courses that are just as crazy as the levels that RedLynx created, then you can share them with the world, hopefully this will keep gamers coming back to play Trials HD every now and then and see what awesome maps have been made.

The presentation is slick to put it simply. The graphics look fantastic on your HDTV, as you watch explosions go off as you land an amazing jump, or see yourself land in a box of tyres and watch them all move around like they should.  The Physics makes this game much more exciting than anything else.

Sometimes the frequent explosions and stuff can frustrate you just a little by sidetracking you from an upcoming obstacle.  But its all fun to watch. The sound effects are simple, but work well with the genre and the music keeps you in the motor cross zone.

Sure looks nice

For those of us with the equipments, the graphics look fantastic on your HDTV set up.

It’s a very fun addictive game, destined to be one of the most popular arcade titles this year I would think. Even you have no interest in motorbikes, give this game a go, as its so much fun and so addictive your eyes will be glued to the television until the power goes out, seriously do yourself a favour and grab this amazing title for 1200 MS points.

©2009 Ben Cadwallader

“9/10

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