Redlynx's Theory of EvolutionThis review considers both Origin of Pain and Riders of Doom DLCs in its final score.Trials Evolution (“Trials Evo”) is a physics-based platformer game involving two things: motorcycles, and plenty of obstacles. Redlynx had a pretty good hand a few years back with this title's predecessor
Trials HD, and this time around they've upped the ante. Trials Evo proudly takes the same core mechanics and gameplay of the
Trials franchise and throws it back at consumers with wonderful new features.
Gameplay is deceivingly simple: drive your motorcycle to the end of a track. The catch? The finish line may very well be on the other side of a few ramps, a lake, or mountain and you'll find yourself leaning forward, back, accelerating, and braking to overcome various obstacles in your way. Tracks are broken down into beginner, easy, medium, hard, and extreme difficulties and the game insists you begin at the beginning as you'll have to pass easier tracks before you can unlock and play harder ones. Each track has a bronze, silver, gold, and platinum medal requirement – the better you do, the better medal you get, the faster you unlock stuff.
What kind of stuff? Trials Evo offers various motorcycles to ride with varying stats (acceleration, top speed, etc) and limited character customization. Customizing the colour of your bike parts and rider's clothes is a fun way to distinguish your character from others, as you may be seeing others while watching other players' track replays or participating in multiplayer.
New to Trials Evo is a multiplayer aspect, pitting you directly against real life players, not just a time. This can happen on special new track types called Supercross where two to four players will race to the finish like never before, or on more traditional Trials tracks where you're racing solo, but against the other players' live ghosts as they are doing the same. For these multiplayer features, you will need Xbox Live Gold but the good news is that the rest of the online features require only Silver. This includes global leaderboards, access to player replays, and all of track central (detailed below) with a Silver account!
A big plus in Redlynx's
Trials incarnation this time around is the improved and emphasized support for user-created content. From “track central” you can access the “lite” and “pro” level editor giving you full access to the game world and mechanics to create anything from a simple to mind-boggling complex custom track. You can also access any and all tracks (and custom skill games) uploaded by others around the world for free, each one of them with their own global leaderboard and ratable (as long as you complete it once).
Not even considering the nearly endless assortment of custom user-made tracks available, Redlynx has provided a wide selection of tracks and challenges, each of varying difficulty for beginners and experts alike to enjoy. The learning curve, however, is ruthlessly unforgiving. While the prospect of many hours of practice in order to master some levels may encourage some players to try their hardest, it may turn away many other players as they begin to encounter the staggeringly technical hard and expert difficulties.
If you've ever played Redlynx's previous
Trials titles, you'll probably immediately realize the improved environment while playing. Indeed, Redlynx has taken the game out of the dull, monotonous warehouse from previous entries of the franchise and given players a gorgeous outdoor backdrop. Additionally, while the tracks you play on are still two dimensional (forward, backwards, up, and down), for the first time Trials Evo introduces tracks that “turn,” making the experience seem more interactive. These two small changes to the game make a wild world of difference, making the game immediately a million times more enjoyable that previous installments.
As of this review, Redlynx have released two expansions:
Origin of Pain and
Riders of Doom, both for 400 MSP ($5.00 USD). Each one adds an additional outdoor environment (an island and desert, respectively), additional tracks, skill games, rider customization, one new bike, and new content for creating custom levels. While they're both top notch and highly recommended if you enjoy the game, casual players may want to avoid buying
Riders of Doom as it is without doubt more difficult than
Origin of Pain.
I'm hard pressed to find any reason why someone shouldn't purchase this quality XBLA game, unless you've played a previous
Trials game and didn't enjoy it. The core concept is unchanged, and you wouldn't like this one either. But I highly urge new players and definitely recommend players who even remotely enjoyed prior titles to try out Redlynx's
Trials Evolution.
SummaryGraphics: Top notch for an XBLA game with high definition outdoor environments to ride.
Sound: Get the job done just fine, but forgettable music leads to a less than perfect score. Players who play a lot may want to consider their own music or background noise, as the same old songs and engine whine can get old fast when practicing a track over and over.
Plot: Not a game for plot; tracks are straightforward and presented to you in “events” that you unlock by getting a certain amount of medals.
Gameplay: Wide range of gameplay available from relaxing beginner tracks, very technical and complex expert tracks, and everything in between. “Skill games” (both retail and user-made available) offer a very wide variety of challenges, for example: backflipping as much as possible within a time limit, or guiding a marble through a maze. Seriously!
Length/Replay Value: With each track offering bronze, silver, gold, and platinum medals, along with skills games and tournaments (several tracks in a row), a determined player can find plenty of length out of just the core game. But when considering the free access to the very intricate level editor and thousands of user-made tracks, just about any player can easily find lots of stuff to do.
Yea or Nay? Unless you have experienced a previous
Trials game and did not enjoy it, pick up this game. For 1200 MSP ($15.00 USD), it's not easy to find a better value.
Final score: 9.0/10
4.5