(explosion)
(helicopter blades whirring)
- [Tom] Trials is one of the few racing series
that still has me twisting and jumping in my seat
alongside my rider, and Trials Rising is no exception.
Despite its simple controls, its awesome fundamentals
require quick reactions that delicate finesse
that make beating my fastest times
a consistently exciting challenge.
It's counterproductive though
that Rising makes some frustrating tweaks
that shift the focus of its progression system
from encouraging self-improvement
to relentless grinding of its daunting optional contracts.
But at least the creative courses themselves
are as thrilling as ever.
Speeding through a course for the very first time
is a tense game of quickly reading the terrain
and adjusting your speed and balance on the fly
to smoothly roll through it as fast as possible.
Doing so takes far more than just holding down
the accelerator, and there's a deep pool
of tricky movement techniques to learn
if you want any hope of completing Rising's hardest levels.
Winning a gold medal on my first try
was always a proud moment,
but some of the more technical courses
just made me happy to have reached the finish line at all.
(crashing)
Going back and improving on those levels
is a different game altogether,
one that's more like solving a series of clever,
momentum-based puzzles.
Rising isn't a huge graphical improvement
over Trials Fusion, but many of the 100+ stages feel deeper
and lusher, with dynamics elements like trains and cars
that zoom in and out of your path.
I particularly loved levels that really broke out
of the straightforward track formula,
letting you drive through a crashing airplane
or along a moving train.
And the early Hollywood level shows just how crazy
the environments can get.
(revving)
Unlocking those levels sure is a drag though.
Where previous games locked new sets of levels
behind a required number of medals,
Rising ties them to your player level.
So instead of encouraging you to go back
and improve your times, you're pretty much forced
to grind Rising's new sponsor contracts,
because they offer the most experience rewards by far,
three to 5,000 apiece for a hardest ones
versus a measly 450 for improving most medals.
Contracts replace Fusion's challenges,
adding special conditions to a stage
for bonus experience and cosmetics.
They can be amusing optional distractions
that range from single requirements
like doing six backflips to stacking multiple at once,
like doing 50 meters of wheelies and 10 front flips
while on fire.
They do make me look at courses differently
as I try to weave in extra flips or limit faults,
but I don't like how the part of Trials I've always loved,
beating my times and gradually improving,
is essentially made a waste of time here.
In the second half of Rising,
I often needed close to 90,000 experience
to open up the next set of tracks,
and that's tedious to grind out even with contracts.
That frustration is compounded
by Rising's more aggressive focus on PvP,
which frames every run as a race
against random player ghosts,
even if you're not going for time.
It was infuriatingly common for me to finally overcome
a hard contract, only to be rewarded with this.
(vuvuzela playing)
I thought it wanted me to be completing these things.
Surprisingly, Rising's most impressive new addition
is its tutorial.
Put simply, this is the first time a Trials game
has actually taught players the tools needed
to beat its hardest levels.
Concepts like bunny-hopping, throttle control, and more
each have their own instructive training course.
It's downright revelatory for the series.
(revving)
The level editor, on the other hand,
remains a nigh-infinitely complex tool,
and as a result, can create nigh-infinitely complex levels.
I'm very happy it's still here,
so I can play the shared creations of people
with more talent for using it than I have.
Its freeform customization has also been extended
into rider cosmetics now,
letting you add stickers to your bike and outfit
or similarly buy other people's creations.
Trials Rising primarily doles out its cosmetics
through laughably stupid loot boxes
full of a deluge of uninteresting, abstract stickers
and duplicate items.
Thankfully, they're purely cosmetic, frequently acquired,
and completely ignorable if you prefer.
Trials Rising offers some of the coolest levels
in the series to date,
and it's new tutorial system does an amazing job
of actually teaching you
how to execute its hardest techniques.
That wide variety of tracks is unfortunately bogged down
by the frustrating grind it takes to unlock them,
and some strange decisions
that lead to a more discouraging experience.
But it's still satisfying to get on the bike
and try for better medals
if you can make it to the finish line.
For more Trials Rising, check out an early look
at the Extreme Hong Kong Harbor track, and for more racing,
check out our review of Dirty Rally 2.0,
and for everything else, keep it right here on IGN.
(screaming)
(cheering and applause)