Plain and simple, pulling off impossible motorbike stunts is fun on the bun.
Trials Rising takes the player all across the globe to compete for glory in a series of races that would certainly not pass an inspection from OHS.
If you remember those flash games where you would overcome a series of obstacles on a motorbike and try your hardest not to stack… the kids who failed media stayed in the computer labs and they’ve made some huge editions to the genre.
These motorsports games are dead simple at the core. The controls are still very close to the basic accelerate and tilt controls from the old Miniclip games. You can brake in Trials Rising to crack out sick endos or get some nasty front flips going but outside of a few obstacles it’s not needed to beat the game.
Please don’t let the simplicity of the player input scare you off this game, Tetris is pretty much just left, right and down and it’s still a rowdy good time if you ask me.
Trials Rising Review
Similar to old arcade games, the joy in Trials Fusion comes from mastery of the basic. Each race pits you against three competitors. Bronze Baby, Silver Bullet and Golden Nugget. Each racer represents the medal respective to their assigned colour and you’ll need to outrace that rider to earn your place on the podium.
I won’t leave a race till I’ve absolutely drilled Gold Nugget because I didn’t strap on my riding boots for a participation ribbon.
Initially, I found myself eating bulk shit.
Until you have the touch, it’s very easy to hold the accelerator flat and wheelie to your doom. As time progresses I found myself easing on and off the gas and even touching those unnecessary brakes from time to time. My times got cut way down and I started beating races on the first go instead of the 500th attempt.
Mind you I still hold it flat for the big jumps because full send quad backies are fully sick bro.
The only thing I like better than the gnarliest of sends is the gnarliest of sends in exotic locations and Trials Rising throws them at you thick and fast.
Carving Squigglies
The levels aren’t just basic reflections of their geographical location. The levels are hugely detailed and massively interactive testaments to the areas they embody. There’s a series of Hollywood sets to race through in California where you can pop a wheelie through a Sci-Fi set.
When you hit the moon craters the CGI kicks in and alien drones shoot green death lasers at your spokes midair. There’s an opportunity to go truly huge in China as the race jumps between the steep mountainside and airborne hot air balloons amidst, what I discerned to be, some lunar festival.
I’m not sure who was in charge of level design but they really achieved something here. I was super impressed and wish the PowerUp! boys just asked me to write about the different levels. Russian missile silos, haunted theme parks featuring skeleton pirate ship rides and medieval castles under a barrage of ballistae fire.
Thematically, the levels are just stunning and so well thought out. They’re also visually stunning which is so important to the genre. When I was in high school playing the OG motorbike games on web browsers, getting to the next level was always so satisfying. It’s just so much better now that the next level isn’t just the same assets in a new configuration but a completely new environment to do my best Krusty Demons impression.
DO A FLIP!
There’s lots of nice little polish around Trials that I appreciated. The ragdoll physics are nice and loose so when you bin the bike the body left behind really barrels toward oblivion. Even though the stacks are satisfying the conditions to crash are pretty loose too so you’ll spend more time stunting than reloading the track.
It’s a simple button click to restart if you mess up your perfect run and another simple click to restart from the nearest checkpoint if you’re just pushing to get this race done. This is the sixth game in the main Trials series and it’s really clear the folks at RedLynx have figured it out now.
Do I have any gripes? Yeah, there are a little too many loading screens that are a little long and I wouldn’t mind a game mode where you could use NoS and do some other tricks than flips. These are very minor complaints though. Trials Rising is phenomenal at its price bracket and I could not recommend it more for people that like motorbikes, competition or just whipping sick flips.
You can deck out your rider to look live Evel Knievel with a samurai helmet. What’s not to love?
Trials Rising was reviewed on PS4 using a digital code provided by Ubisoft.
PowerUp! Reviews
Game Title: Trials Rising
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Full Send - 10/1010/10
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Slowding - 6/106/10
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The last Samurai-der - 10/1010/10
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I did a backflip off a hot air balloon in the Chinese moonlight - 10/1010/10
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It's super cheap - 10/1010/10
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Flashbacks to the highschool computer lab - 10/1010/10
