NIDZUMI+

So far Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade project has gone swimmingly for the second year in a row. Five weeks of constant top-draw titles released week after week are just what the doctor ordered during the retail drought over the Summer. The one game that stuck out like a sore thumb though was Trials HD. I’m ashamed to say that I wrote Trials HD off as just another throwaway downloadable title that didn’t make too much sense within this promotion. That’s why, out of all the Summer of Arcade releases, I was surprised to find myself spending the most time and having the most fun with what used to be a flash game.

The chances are you’ve already played Trials in a number of flash incarnations although HD definitely won’t make you question the need for a full release of a flash game. Trials HD takes the basic concept of you riding a motorbike over various obstacles and jumps and primarily leaves its simplicity untouched. All you are doing is accelerating, breaking and using the analog stick to shift your riders weight on the bike. The game nails the controls and feel of riding over these trials to a tee, although that could partly down to the convincing animation of your rider.

Puzzles, explosions, realtime leaderboards and much more are added to this framework. The plethora of constantly challenging levels are innovative and mindboggling with their complex physics based puzzles and jumps. While the concept is innately simple, the level design is second to none.

Level design that you are allowed to partake in yourself as Trials HD comes with a complex level creator. Complete Axis control and object placement is entirley up to you with a level creator that could have been as big as LittleBigPlanet. The glaring omission from the whole game is the ‘YouTube of levels’ that would keep you coming back time after time. While you can share created tracks amongst friends, it’s not really enough to keep glued to the game.

What will keep to coming back are the previously mentioned realtime leaderboards. While you’re on Xbox Live a progress bar shows your position on the track along with everyone from your friends list. Not only has Trials been well supported with leaderboards for the mammoth number of tracks but the simple addition of a ticker on the HUD turns every stage into a dynamic competition.

But the one thing that really makes the game, is even simpler. You’ll fly through the first few levels but towards the tail end of the game you’ll be failing time after time. The game becomes incredibly frustrating to the point where you’ll have to take a few minutes break before attempting again. So the one thing that really makes Trials HD excellent is the instant retry button. With the touch of a button you are thrown back to the last checkpoint without a hesitation. You put loading screens in there and you instantly have a bad game but the fact that after every little mistake you can instantly reset yourself avoids a lot of unnecessary hair pulling.

It’s surprising, frustrating, at points funny (although not when it tries to be) and most of all stupidly simple fun. The tracks might be littered with explosions and the audio full with throwaway generic music but once you’ve taken them out you’ve got simplicity executed. If you don’t mind a bit of frustrating persistence from time to time, Trials HD needs to be considered although the game is innately better when you have friends on the leaderboards.