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“Weeeeelllcooome to the future!” the Trials Fusion: Awesome MAX Edition ’s start menu opens in a big, cheesy synth-pop hook. At the same time, a cat with a gun riding a unicorn bursts onto the screen. It is soon followed by a magical rainbow descending from the heavens and a posse of half-human, half-robot motorcyclists. As far as first impressions go, Trials Fusion certainly leaves a mark.
This is a game that clearly wants to have fun and to not be taken too seriously. Or at least, that’s what it works so hard to tell us in its opening seconds. But is that actually the case? And more importantly, is Trials Fusion a good game? The answer is a little more complicated than its zany intro might suggest…
Welcome To The Future
The gameplay of Trials Fusion is simple at its core. You must get from the start of the 2D, side-on level to the end. To do this, you drive your motorbike by carefully controlling the speed you accelerate at, shifting the angle of the bike and the rider’s position on it. As far as game mechanics go, that’s all you’ll be doing for the vast majority of the game.
Will you zoom through the many obstacles of the track and land that gold medal, looking effortless while doing so? Or will you crush and burn, launching yourself full-speed into the wall just beneath the level’s end, ruining an otherwise perfect run? That’s all up to you.
The game offers a few distractions from these A to B courses. A trick system is introduced that requires you position your biker in specific ways mid-air. Not only can your bike sail through the air gracefully and pass through a ring of fire, you can do it while striking a heroic pose. Trick based tracks are separate from the main stages and tricks are never needed just to finish a stage. But If you want to complete every challenge the game has to offer, you’ll have to master every nuance of the trick system and look cool while you do it.
Some of these challenges are really out there and fit the game’s quirky persona perfectly. Drive backwards a little at the start of a level, and you’ll play out the level from an entirely new camera angle. Masterfully guide your biker to a secret area of the level and you might find yourself playing pingpong with a penguin. No, really.
For all it’s tempting during a stressful run, the game’s handling and physics cannot be faulted. Every vehicle has a different feeling of weight to it that is just right. While the physics aren’t always entirely predictable, they always feel right. After all, sometimes, gravity is a cruel practical joker and your failure is the punchline. But when the spectacle of a crash is this outrageous and slapstick, it’s impossible not to chuckle at yourself.
For a good portion of the game, Trials emphasizes simple but addicting gameplay, that’s a real treat to behold whether you crash or triumph. Levels are easy to get through, but doing so within a time limit and without any faults takes practice. Unlocking the later levels takes more medals, so eventually you will have to go back and nail these courses flawlessly. But by then you’ll be ready and you’ll have a blast obliterating your previous records.
Visions Of Tomorrow
An important part of a game feeling good to play is it looking good to play. With the series’ origins reaching back to the flash games of the early 2000s, there’s the danger that it could remain in the past and feel outdated.
Thankfully this is not the case. Gone are the dark and dingy warehouses of Trials past. Trials Fusion has you racing through blistering craglandsand frozen wastes. You'll blitz through cities dazzling with neon lights, volcanic vents and even the bottom of the ocean floor and more.
As a game from the early PS4/Xbox One generation, the visuals are no longer cutting edge. But the sheer variety of different environments you ride through is staggering and each has the perfect level of detail. None of the levels are too busy or distracting as you whizz by. But slow down for a second and you’ll spot all manner of little details and easter eggs the developers at Redlynx lovingly included.
The sound design of Fusion does exactly what you’d want from it. The game’s fast tempo, electronic beats and bops settle seamlessly into the backdrop of the roaring engine of your bike and screams of your rider as you tumble helplessly into the abyss again. Nothing is quite as iconic as that opening tune, but it’s everything you need to get into the zone as you try to shave seconds off your time.
If there’s one part of Trials Fusion’s presentation that falls flat, it’s the writing and “story”. It is bizarre that Trial Fusion even attempts to have a story and sadly, the effort is wasted.. Any exposition given to you by the A.I. companions that talk at your rider is meaningless fluff at best. At worst, it's tedious drivel when you’ve heard it dozens of times in your quest for the platinum medal. The game’s attempts at humour grate just as fast. A few of the quips are funny the first time round, but hearing them again and again as you perfect each course is a test of endurance.
Time & Time Again
Trials Fusion is a test of endurance in more ways than one. The game’s intro screen and opening levels are a trick. It lulls you in with the promise of a high octane, thrill filled rush through stages where you either reach the end victorious or go out in a blaze of glory. And for the first half of the game, Trials Fusion is exactly that.
Then comes the wall. Trials Fusion doesn’t have a difficulty spike. It has a difficulty brickwall which you smack into at mach speed. Suddenly the game expects you to be pulling off perfect bunny hops in rapid succession. Out of nowhere, you'd asked to flawlessly manage the weight of your bike as you climb practically vertical ramps.
The immediacy and fun, frantic chaos of the first half is gone. Now comes a series of incredibly difficult, technically inclined challenges. Each demands minute precision control and mastery of your bike. No longer is it a question of whether you will land this grand, stretching jump or explode into a fireball at the bottom of a chasm. Now it’s a question of how many hundreds of retries this section is going to take you, and how much time you’re willing to throw at it.
None of this is bad. The satisfaction that comes from beating these stages is unmatched by anything the game has offered before – or that many games offer at all. Trials Fusion is always high quality and great at what it does. But what it does changes throughout the game. The first half is a spectacle filled joyride. The second half is a ride through hell where every inch of progress is earned through blood, sweat and tears. And it feels like a far cry away from the unicorns and rainbows promised at the start of the game.
The Future Is In Your Hands
If putting yourself through the campaign’s sadistic later stages isn’t your cup of tea, there are other options. Lots of them, actually.
This being the Trials Fusion: Awesome Max edition, all of the game’s DLC from it’s first year is included – dozens upon dozens of tracks. These tracks are the game’s best, carrying all the visual spectacle and sheer fun of the main game’s first half. At the same time, they sprinkle in the brutal difficulty of the latter stages.
Of course, that pales in comparison to the thousands of tracks online made via Trials Fusion’s track editor. Here can you can find any type of level you could possibly want to play. Don’t want to touch the controller and have the game look badass all on it’s own? There’s plenty of “auto” levels that do just that. The game’s included tracks not difficult enough for you? Somehow, the twisted minds of the community have mad even harder levels. Long and short, levels that are practical jokes and levels that try to tell elaborate stories. They’re all here.
What’s a shame is that the barrier to entry for creating your own levels is so high. Trials Fusion has a very sophisticated toolkit with everything you could ever need to create your own levels. The tricky part is figuring out where everything is and how it works. Much like the main levels, Trials throws you in at the deep end and expects you to figure everything out on your own. If you want to learn how to make tracks, you’ll have to do so outside of the game itself. There’s plenty of tutorials on YouTube showing exactly how to do this in great detail. But it does feel like a real waste that not even a basic tutorial is included in the game.
For those who want to show off their skills directly to their friends, Trials Fusion also has four person multiplayer. Each player is on their own track and there’s no direct interaction with each other. Still, watching your mates faceplant during their tricks and laughing at them feels so much better than just racing their ghosts.
Final Thoughts
Trials Fusion is an excellent racer and platformer all in one. It has a bit of an identity crisis with what exactly it wants to be and it won’t be the perfect game for anyone. But the sheer amount of content on offer here means that whatever your flavour of bike riding action, you’ll find plenty of tracks to tear through to your heart’s content.
That concludes our thoughts on Trials Fusion: Awesome Max Edition. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy Trials Fusion: Awesome Max Edition today click here!
