Games I Want - Part II: Trials Evolution (XBLA)

This is a bit of an unplanned blog post today, but I felt I had to whenever I realised that Trials Evolution is released tomorrow on Xbox Live Arcade!

Trials HD is one of my favourite titles this generation.  At its core this is a platforming game with a time trial element - except you're on a motorbike.  And you're traversing through a strange obstacle course in some madman's warehouse.  There's no story, no reason behind what you're doing.  You're just trying to get from the start to the finish as fast as possible.  The controls themselves are very simple - accelerate, brake, lean forward, lean back - but it's all about using these moves in combination and with near perfect timing.  The early levels in Trials HD were pretty simple, involving a few ramps and jumps to allow you to just have fun working your way through them.  As you get on to the harder courses the game gets tough - like hair pulling, controller throwing tough!  I'm proud to say I was able to complete all the Trials of the first game - though some of them took a lot of attempts.

So what does Trials Evolution bring to the table to up the ante?  To be honest if it was just more of the same I'd still be hyped about the game and would buy it in a flash, but surely it's not just called "Evolution" for a laugh?

As you can see from the above screenshot the action moves outside of the weird warehouse seen in Trials HD and into larger landscapes and some frankly stunning backgrounds.  If you look a little closer at the screenshot though you'll see something that has me really excited.  Yep, there are four bikes in that shot, all racing at the same time.  One of the most addicting things about Trials HD was the online leaderboards - completing a track, seeing how you stack up against your friends, and then doing your damnedest to beat them!  The feature was brilliantly integrated to the game as it gave you notifications during the level of how you were doing in relation to your friends and I'd imagine it will still be integral in Evolution, however the ability to actually race your friends in real time will be manic and a hell of a load of fun.

They also seem to have improved the level editor a whole lot making anything possible if the trailer is to be believed.  To be honest I don't have the patience to make the most of a feature like this, but for a lot of people this will be the main draw of the game.  If you're a LittleBigPlanet fan then this will interest you greatly.  And hey, even if you don't plan on making any levels yourself at least you can try out other people's creations!  

As this is just a preview I'm not sure of what else has been added/improved but I know I'll be spending hours finding out - check out the jaw dropping trailer below and let me know what you think.  Hopefully I'll see you on those leaderboards!

Phil

P.S. If you ever played Elastomania you will love this game.  If you never played Elastomania then go and download it right now!