Trials Evolution Message Board

When one of the finest PC releases of 2013 is a side-scrolling motorbike game – Trials Evolution: Gold Edition – I can understand that some who’ve not played the Trials games before might be confused by concept. Fortunately there’s now no excuse for not having a play of this ridiculously fun game, as at last there’s a demo.

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Trials Evolution finally came to PC shores a couple of weeks back. Rebranding itself the Gold Edition, and adding in a bunch of features unique to the PC, RedLynx has once more returned to the platform that gave them life, that they so cruelly spurned. Has it been worth the wait? Does it survive Uplay integration? Here’s wot I think:

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It’s obvious that RedLynx stopped loving us. We were there for them, day and night, attending to playing their games. But then oh look who should stride in with their long legs and big, muscley arms but Microsoft, flashing their wallets and giant cars. And Trials really became an Xbox thing, leaving us staring at the space where RedLynx used to be, sobbing.

Oh, but who’s this crawling back to us? Microsoft’s big money and tall hats weren’t everything you hoped for, eh? You think you can just waltz back in here, play with our hearts like they’re days old treacle pudding? Yes, quite correct, because Trials Evolution is bloody brilliant.

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Associate editor at Game Informer. Two-time Guinness World Record holder. Esteemed author of Air Force Gator.

10. Trials Evolution

Whether it's NASCAR, F1, or Fast and Furious crap, I could not give less of a shit about racing if it doesn't involve turtle shells or have the word Burnout in its name. If you're giving Trials a passing glance, it may look like a generic dirt bike racing game. Thirty seconds of playing this fantastic downloadable title (or its predecessor) is enough to change anyone's tune. Few games consistently engage me like Trials, as I'm either thrilled about a perfect gold medal run, furious at myself over a dumb mistake, or cracking up at a spectacular wipeout or ridiculous end-level animation. When it comes to pure, dumb fun, few gaming experiences nail it as perfectly as Trials Evolution.

9. Soulcalibur V

I've long considered the original Soul Calibur to be the best fighting game ever made. That said, I felt subsequent installments maintained a certain level of quality but failed to recreate the experience I had with the original. This fifth entry doesn't top the Dreamcast classic, but it's the next best thing. Namco Bandai omitted some of the awkward features from IV and introduced numerous new characters to the already-beefy roster. Coupled with solid online play and the best visuals in the series to date, it's the best fighting game I played this year.

8. Dishonored

As a guy that sucks at stealth games, I didn't know how much I'd enjoy Arkane's ambitious new IP. Playing on PC, I quickly realized that quick saves and quick loads work perfectly with the wide variety of approaches Corvo can take when stalking his prey. Dorking around with elaborate and violent kills is a blast when you know you can simply hop back with a quick load and take your objective seriously. Nailing that perfect kill is a rush, but failing in spectacular and hilarious fashion is often just as entertaining.

7. Hero Academy

Asynchronous gameplay can be great if done correctly, and Robot Entertainment's Hero Academy does it better than any other game I've played. Every time I see the little badge on my iPhone tell me that I've got a turn to play, I can't wait to jump in and obsess over the perfect five-move approach to whatever situation I'm currently in. I typically don't dabble much in microtransactions, but I immediately drain a couple of bucks from my Apple Store wallet every time a new team is introduced. Almost a year after its release, I still find myself excited at the outset of each new match.

6. Mass Effect 3

I've never been much of a video game lore guy, unless you wanna talk about Metal Gear Solid or the sweet endings in Twisted Metal 2. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed learning the fate of Shepard, the Reapers, and whatever crew lived through my reckless decisions in the last two games. I even loved the original ending, so I'm glad that the internet has finally shut up about it.

5. WWE ‘13

As anyone who knows me or follows me on Twitter is well aware, I've wavered between different phases of obsession regarding pro wrestling for my entire life. The height of my obsession happened during the industry's greatest time period, the Attitude Era. THQ did an amazing job of capturing what made the late 90s such a thrilling time, taking gamers through recreations of Steve Austin, The Rock, Mick Foley, and others' most memorable moments. When you factor in its endless WWE Universe mode, unmatched creation suite, and the best roster of any wrestling game to date, this is the most fun a wrestling game has been since the Nintendo 64 glory days.

4. Fez

I went into Fez fairly blind, knowing only that it was an indie labor of love that had been in development for several years. Running around its world, shifting perspective, and collecting the basic cubes was fun enough at first, but what really hooked me were the elaborate puzzles required for the anti-cubes. No other game in recent memory had me scribbling clues and symbols on notebook paper like a damn crazy person, and I loved every second of it.

3. New Super Mario Bros. U

Nintendo could keep crapping out 2D Mario games every couple of years until the day I die, and I'd probably love every one of them. I'm certainly not alone when I say that I grew up on classic Mario platforming, and it's a joy to be able to relive it with the New series. As long as Nintendo continues to innovate with its stellar 3D Mario series, I'm completely fine with an unapologetically nostalgic side series that pays tributes to gaming's most consistent franchise.

2. XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Since I never had a PC capable of running much more than the original Doom, I don't have the strongest background in the strategy genre. When I heard Firaxis had made XCOM: Enemy Unknown accessible to newcomers as well as veterans of the genre, I was intrigued. It only took a few alien encounters to fall in love with the tense combat and engaging strategic layer of the game. I loved it so much, I restarted from scratch after spending a dozen hours in a desperate, satellite-starved first run.

1. Borderlands 2

After pumping well over 100 hours into the first Borderlands, I knew Gearbox would have to really knock the sequel out of the park if it was going to grab me as much as the original. They went above and beyond, with four (later, five) fantastic new classes featuring skill trees stocked with entertaining and useful abilities. Fleshing out an actual story with a defined antagonist also helped put it above its already-great predecessor. It takes a special game to keep me hooked long after I've reviewed it, and I still find myself loving my time in Pandora months later.

True to its name, Trials Evolution is the biggest, baddest version yet of RedLynx's brutally tough physics-based motorbike racing-platforming thing. The heart and soul of Trials hasn't changed one bit; it's still all about forcing you through the most complicated obstacle courses you could conceivably navigate on two wheels. Considering all I really wanted after playing Trials HD was more Trials, that's a great thing. And this time, the trimmings around that core conceit are so robust and the sheer content so plentiful that it's hard to imagine Trials getting much better than this for 15 bucks.

I won't deny frequently wanting to throw the controller at the TV while playing Trials Evolution. Come to think of it, this wouldn't be a Trials game if I didn't feel that way, but it's not like the game goes out of its way to maliciously abuse you. It's harsh but fair. After all, the gameplay in Trials hinges on a grounded, plausible physics model where even the slightest throttling or braking or leaning has great significance to the way your bike handles, and there's always a way to get over the most absurdly angled ramp or crazy-looking jump, even if you haven't figured it out yet. As frustrating as some of the later courses can be, there's always room for you to improve with a little more practice and a little more finesse. Blaming Trials for being too hard is like getting mad at gravity when you fall down.

The good news for casual Trials fans or newcomers is that Evolution offers a gentler learning curve than Trials HD did, which wasted no time getting stupid hard and not offering you much else to do if you weren't interested in going really in-depth with the gameplay. There's a huge list of courses in Evolution and they're broken up sensibly, with a more gradual ramp in difficulty that's punctuated by occasional license tests which actually offer some good tutorials on how to do things like drive up an almost sheer incline. Make no mistake, there's still a point where the late-game courses get so technical that they're no longer intuitive and you have to inch your way through them slowly, failing a bunch of obstacles over and over until you master them. But by the time you get that far, there's a better chance you'll have at least some idea of how to tackle those crazy ramps and jumps without pulling out all your hair.

Other than a user-made track feature that was hamstrung by limited sorting features, the main course progression and a few wacky minigames were pretty much all there was to occupy you in Trials HD. So it's great that RedLynx has fleshed out the peripheral features so thoroughly in Evolution. The big story here is multiplayer. There's a rollicking four-player mode, ideal for talking trash, that works locally or online, where you compete through a series of rapid-fire tracks and earn points based on your time and number of faults. You can also compete through a more serious, by-the-numbers race where you only see ghost-style representations of the other players moving through the course at the same time. The game lets you rack up a bunch of money playing the single-player tracks and then buy a bunch of cosmetic gear for your rider so you can look unique when you compete, and I really appreciate that there's a straight-up color wheel that lets you colorize your outfit any way you want. More games should have that.

The short list of minigames from Trials HD has morphed into a veritable circus of skill games that have you largely leaving the bikes behind so you can ski on dirt or try to fly across a long jump field by flapping a pair of makeshift wings made out of boards. Even the ones that stick to the motorbikes are pretty ridiculous; one of them suggests that your brakes are broken and challenges you to get as far as you can with the bike's throttle pushed all the way down. The skill games are a great change of pace from the more seriously technical main levels. And since every level in the game is hooked directly into leaderboards and ghost data for your friends, it's a cinch to start competing with each other for better times, even indirectly.

Evolution's expanded user-generated content features may well be its most valuable feature, after some time passes and more great levels get made. The game makes the simple but extremely necessary improvement over Trials HD of letting you view user courses made by everyone, not just people on your friends list, and there's a wide variety of ways to search for and sort new levels, with some curated by the developer and others categorized by type and rating. There's--count 'em!--two level editors in here, one that makes it pretty easy for almost anyone to make simple courses that hew close to Trials' obstacle-course format. Then there's the "pro" editor, which lets you dig so deep into the engine and game mechanics that it's capable making things like a first-person shooter and an overhead-scrolling Raiden clone (which already exist). How is it possible this game quietly shipped with LittleBigPlanet in it? It's nuts.

This game also goes way, way over the top with the visuals in a way that Trials HD could only dream of. That game took place entirely in a pretty bland industrial warehouse sort of environment. By contrast, Evolution seems to have lost its damn mind. There's one course that takes place in a warzone, with planes dropping bombs all around you as you go, and another that seems to be set in Stonehenge under a blood-red sky. The pitch-perfect tribute to Limbo stands out as another memorable course, and most of the levels end with some kind of ridiculous animation that sends your rider flying into the moon or headfirst into a toilet. Something always seems to be blowing up nearby because, why not? There's a ton of variety in the art design and a general irreverence that pervades the entire game, down to the hilarious rapping about riding motorbikes that you hear when you boot the game up. It's hard not to feel some affection for a game that gets so randomly silly.

It's also hard to stop playing Trials Evolution for very long. The action is as tight and demanding as it ever was, and this time around it's such a fully featured and attractive package that you shouldn't miss it if you have any interest in this style of game at all. It's one of the best games to hit a downloadable service in a good long while.