Trials Evolution

Trials is Awesome.

If you haven't played Trials, its a side-scrolling motorcycle driving game where you control only the throttle, the brake and the ability shift the rider's weight forward and back (so as to tilt the motorcycle up or down). Using this simple control scheme you are tasked with completing time trials through obstacle courses. You go as fast as you reasonably can while navigating jumps, dips, uneven terrain and other obstacles. Its what Excitebike grew up to be.

Trials: Evolution Gold Edition is latest entry in the Trials series and the first entry since 2008's Trials 2: Second Edition. It is the first entry I have played.

I came into this game with high hopes, because I'd heard a lot about it from reviews of the Xbox Live Arcade entries in the series, and it didn't disappoint. The game is good about introducing you to new concepts slowly and letting you just open the throttle in the first few tracks.

As you progress and earn medals for completing trials or challenges, you open up more of them. You also earn the ability to "test" for higher Drivers Licence levels. These tests are actually tutorials, teaching you how to do the more complicated tricks that you will need in future trials. Upon completion of each license test, you unlock a new motorcycle.

What keeps me coming back to this game is the skill curve. The game rewards becoming proficient with your bike, and getting that gold medal on a course you had previously struggled with feels amazing. And just as you think you're good at this game, you get to the next batch of tracks that knock you down a peg.

Driver Dress-Up

While doing all that, you will get money. Money is not used to unlock trials or anything directly related to gameplay. Money can be spent in the "Garage" to buy clothing pieces for your driver or different motorcycle pieces for your bikes. My driver is using an eclectic mix of items unlocked through the UPlay client with that thing's achievement points.

Changing the clothes or bike parts won't affect anything other than how cool you look in screenshots or how other players in multiplayer see you.

Crash County and the HD Warehouse

There's a lot of tracks in Trials: Evolution Gold Edition. The "Gold Edition" in the name of this Steam version is there because this includes all the tracks and skill challenges from Trials HD, the Xbox Live Arcade exclusive console debut of Trials, right in there with the tracks from Trials: Evolution (also previously on XBLA).

In the Single Player campaign, you press the trigger buttons to switch between the "new" Trials: Evolution tracks and the Trials HD tracks. The Trials HD stages are "HD Warehouse". They all take place in a warehouse, with tracks made of ramps and giant tires and flaming barrels and the kind of stuff you always find in video game warehouses. These tracks tend to be more about doing tricks and navigating obstacles.

The Trials: Evolution tracks are "Crash County" and are where, in my opinon, the game really shines. The tracks and challenges in Crash County occur in a variety of settings. The recurring setting is dirt track-woodlands, but it varies wildly and puts you, the motorcyclist only trying to get from point A to point B in as little time as possible, in some crazy positions.

Driving through logging camps, or over foggy, mystical ruins. Speeding through a World War 2 battle as artillery shells drop, or over sandy dunes as jet fighters drop bombs and oil wells burn. In one case a nuclear meltdown serves as your reason for speeding away, which is as good an impetus as any. In another you drive across rooftops in a city where gravity makes no sense and reality bends on itself. The Crash County tracks in general seem to let you go faster and make much bigger jumps than the obstacle-laden tracks of the warehouse.

Uplay, but Sometimes You Don't

Trials is an Ubisoft game, so it uses the Uplay program to launch the game and manage multiplayer. Joining a "party" with your Uplay friends (which I'm sure you have tons of) sometimes doesn't work, sometimes does work and sometimes tells you its working but really isn't. A friend and I got it to work, but we had to look up the correct order of joining a Uplay party and forming an in-game party and try it a few times before it took. The game does offer quickmatching with random people, but I don't really care for that.

Once you manage to get a multiplayer lobby going, organizing group trials is easy and turns out to be pretty fun. There are Trials courses, which are the tracks from single player and its essentially a simultaneous ghost race for the best time. There are also Supercross tracks, which are modified courses that have four lanes and everyone is actually racing simultaneously and you get docked points for faults/resetting to a checkpoint. I recommend the multiplayer very much, if you can find a friend or don't mind playing with randoms.

Also if you do manage to add friends to Uplay, you can play against your friend leaderboard on the single player tracks and race against the ghosts of their best times.

Get This Game

Overall, I recommend playing Trials: Evolution Gold to everyone. Get the game, pick up a controller and have a blast. Then friend me on Steam/Uplay and we can get some races going!