Game Review: Trials HD

The Press

Trials HD

For: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade, 1200 Microsoft Points)

Score: * * * *

Trials HD is a simple game but it may keep you up all night trying to find the perfect run over the obstacle courses that make up this Xbox Live Arcade game.

It's based on motorcycling in which riders bounce and hop over various obstacles while trying to stay upright and doing it in the fastest time possible.

It's a side-scrolling game and your controls are accelerate (right trigger), brake (left trigger) and lean your rider (the left analogue stick). Along the way you'll have to backflip, ride over tilting platforms and get your timing right so that a falling container catapults your bike up a level.

Trials HD comes with varying difficulty levels plus a variety of skill mini-games and tournaments. Initially, tracks are easy, involving little more than accelerating flat out, jumping a few times and then crossing the finishing line. Later levels become increasingly difficult.

Some involve almost controller- tossing moments as you try to co- ordinate your skills so as not to tip your rider off the motorcycle as you negotiate a jump.

Generously placed checkpoints mean that when your rider does a noggin-smacking faceplant into the edge of a high ramp (notice that I say "when"), you don't have to restart the whole course.

Although, sometimes I found it easier to restart a track from scratch than from the last checkpoint - and I was often restarting after a few metres.

Occasionally, I made it through relatively unscathed.

The mini-games that get unlocked as you progress, such as rolling on top of a giant steel ball or flinging your rider as far as you can are hilarious.

Trials HD is one of those games that urges you do "one more level, just one more" before you go to bed.

And if you have Xbox Live friends that also own Trials HD, then be prepared to put in some overtime - just to knock them off the top ranking.

In fact, what started as a bit of harmless smack talk on Twitter with two colleagues has become a full- blown challengefest, with each of us desperately trying to outdo each other.

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