Welcome to the future.
I have played my fair share of games featuring some type of motorbike traversing different environments -games like Urban Trial Freestyle and Joe Danger, but I have never actually played a full-on Trials game before. The series is known for its addictive nature and brutal difficulty, and after spending some time with Trials Fusion, I can see all of those aspects still hold true.
Trials Fusion feels heavier than the other games I have played in the genre. The weight of the bike feels more solid, and pinpoint precision is of the utmost importance if I want to complete a track. Tilting the left stick ever so slightly could result in me wiping out, or cut my track time in half. It was all about trial and error, and due to how quickly the game restarts with the touch of a button or the touch pad, it never felt like a problem.
Nicolas Cage is The Ghost Rider.
The constant leader boards kept me coming back to previously cleared tracks just to see if I could beat one of my friend’s best times. To give me even more incentive to keep going, ghosts can be turned on to show me exactly how people on my friends list completed the track. It’s a great tool for both showing me what I can do to improve my times, as well as give me motivation to keep striving for a better time. To top that all off, each track has three challenges that can be achieved. These can range from performing a certain number of flips to finding secret areas in the track itself.
Challenge levels break up the game play a bit, and for the better. When I am tired of doing trial tracks, I can jump over to a Skill Game to see how far I can make it down a track without leaning my rider, or how far I can fling my rider after bailing off my bike at the end of a ramp. They offer a pretty fun distraction, and even allow me to watch replays of both my friends as well as other players.
Tricky Tricky Tricky.
There is a new addition to the Trials series in Fusion and it is one that I really don’t care for. That is the inclusion of a trick system. When in the air, I can tilt the right stick to move my rider around the bike itself. Depending on which direction I move and the angle the bike is at, the rider will perform different tricks like the Superman or the Proud Hero. When releasing the right stick, the driver snaps back to the bike in a riding position, but the bike may not be at an angle where it can land, so the potential for crashing is high when performing tricks and trying to flip at the same time. When playing a trials track, I never even used the tricks because they are all about making it to the finish line in the shortest amount of time. Only when I hit tracks that required tricks did I ever actually perform them.
Let’s be honest, this game may not be for everyone. Even if I had a great time with the first few tiers of tracks, when I begin getting into the more challenging levels, I hit that wonderful brick wall. This can turn a good amount of players off from the game. I can easily spend 30 minutes on a single track and end up just getting a bronze medal for it. It’s like the later levels are for the hardest of the hardcore players, but for many, that is all part of the fun.
While the soundtrack is fun for the most part, the announcers that talk during the levels can get really annoying and repetitive, especially when redoing the same section over and over again. Luckily, these can be turned off in the menus.
Trials Fusion is a fun game. It will take some patience to complete most of the tracks, but with some determination and a good amount of time, it can be done. When I want to get some more variety, I can always go into the online database and play other player’s tracks that range from stupid easy to insanely difficult, as well as create my own tracks for my friends to play. There’s a ton of content here, and Red Lynx is promising even more content in the future though DLC. If you don’t mind a bit of trial and error and enjoy ridiculous tracks and challenges, Trials Fusion is a pretty complete package for $20 dollars, and I’d gladly pay that for it.
Review copy of game provided by publisher. Primary play on PlayStation 4.
Fred
Good review and I agree for the most part, I specially like this phrase “The constant leader boards kept me coming back to previously cleared tracks just to see if I could beat one of my friend’s best times.” because that’s what I did until I was first of ALL my friends in ALL the tracks, and I still am, so Mr. Drew and ZTGD staff, it’s time for you to go back and do better times so I can curse for hours trying to beat you all… again! XD