So I wanted to get back into writing and decided to try my hand at a quick review of my current addiction. Please give me all the criticism you can think of. I need to get better at this before even thinking about freelancing.

Trials Frontier: Almost a Trials game in Your Pocket.

With the release of Trials Fusion on consoles and PC, there has been very little talk over developer RedLynx's first ever mobile version of the franchise that hit the iOS App Store last week. Let's change that and take a quick look into the all-new Free-to-play Trials Frontier

The game starts off with you, a lone rider with a busted-up bike having to ride your way through desert obstacle courses consisting of pretty classic Trials looking jumps, loops, and steep inclines. the game does a great job of handling the touch input to give just fine enough movement that you never feel like you're losing control of the bike. Backflips and front-flips are executed with ease and never feel as if the game is taking away control from you while the trick completes unlike the drifting mechanics in Ridge Racer Slipstream. Everything you do while racing is on you. If you missed that jump over to the next platform, it was most likely your fault and not bad design.

Getting past the tutorial levels will lead you to the Hub Town where all the real story takes place. Well, what little story is needed in a Trials game. You are a racer. There is a racer faster than you. Beat that guy. And off you go! Taking on quests from a colorful cast of NPC's, upgrading your bike in the garage, and just having a grand 'ole time until BAM! You're hit with the dreaded Energy Meter; the bane of every free-to-play game on mobile devices these days. In Trials Frontier, this is presented as Fuel. At the start, you have 25 Fuel and must use five of that resource to begin every race. The max amount increases by one every level-up and can be increased artificially by spending Gems. The max increase amount of +50 costs 925 Gems, and when 1000 Gems costs $19.99, you'd be better off just playing until you run out of fuel and let it recharge. Even then, when the later levels in the game start making you want throw your iPad against a wall like all good Trials games should, that recharge time will be a blessing in disguise. Especially when they start adding in enemy racers along side you in the courses.

The one critical downside to this downscaled version of the series is mostly in the track designs. Being that this is a more touch-friendly game compared to previous entries that normally used a controller, the developers had to step back from the very complex and multi-layered tracks of the console version in favor of a simplified, almost Lite approach to balance the difficulty and playability. While I completely understand the reason for this, and if I hadn't played those proper console games I doubt it would concern me at all, the levels all seem a bit bland and short. The same loop and steep jumps tend to repeat themselves enough times that I kept wondering whether or not I had raced on this track yesterday. And when the races are so short, that fuel meter empties out very quickly leaving me wanting more, but refusing to spend the money required to recharge the meter.

All in all, Trials Frontier is a great free game that I will continue to chip away at even though it can't live up to the expectation of what the Trials name brings, but if you're willing to overlook its more simplistic style, there is plenty of fun to be had.