Trials HD

Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game’s About
Trials HD might sound like some ported over RPG game from the 8-Bit era but it is an all new racing/puzzle game on the XBLA. The concept for Trials HD started as a flash game that quickly grew a following and is now a fresh and original title on the XBLA. If you want to try the Flash based version you can check it out here. If you played the Flash game, the HD version is drastically different. It’s like the difference between a budget for a cable access commercial and a movie. Do you have some time set aside? Because you’ll be hooked the second you hit the gas pedal.

What’s Hot
Trials HD lives by the notion that less is more. You are a stunt bike driver that is given an impossible course to run. With the break, gas and your posture that tilts the bike, you must navigate the 2D track (think Excitebike). This is the basic concept. Since the game is so focused as a laser beam, Trials HD builds on the core quickly and easily. You’ll be backflipping and navigating the difficult courses with anxious trepidation as you try and achieve gold status on each run.

After you master all the tracks, there are plenty of mini-games to conquer. If you get tired of those, you can even build you own Trials HD tracks that you can save, upload and share with your friends. The ability to keep coming back to either improve your score or discover more challenges is one of the greatest parts of the game.

What’s Not
The only thing that doesn’t shine about Trials HD is the lack of a multiplayer component. There is a leaderboard, but races to see who could complete the track first would have made Trials HD be even greater than it is.

You have to really master lightly flicking the analog sticks to complete some of the harder levels. It can cause untold levels of stress when you almost make it to the next checkpoint and then you wipe out from a crash. The stress is sadistically part of the fun of Trials as it feeds into the challenge and desire to want to keep playing.

Final Word
Perhaps Trials HD should be named “Holy crap, I’m doing flips while things are exploding and I can’t put down the controller because I’m having so much fun” since Trials HD sounds rather boring compared to what the game actually entails. Trials HD is one of the must haves for your XBLA collection.