Evolution was the perfect moniker for a new Trials. As is the traditional form for a sequel, Trials Evolution better realized and further expanded upon ideas established in Trials HD. Tracks were longer and more finely detailed, environments were artistically diverse and technically better composed, and Trials’ addictive pursuit of perfection was left intact. Trials Evolution was the perfect Trials game. Where could the development team at RedLynx go from there?
Fusion is a virtuous aspiration. Combining separate entities into a cohesive package neatly avoids problems that can plague sequels. It allows creative divergence while maintaining requisite allegiance, hopefully blending old and new into a better game rather than an indifferent sequel. Trials Fusion seeks to layer a true stunt system through its maniacal blend of physics-based motorbike racing, all the while leaving room for surreal weirdness and circus sideshows. Unfortunately, these ideas feel like disjointed appendages to a perfect body, leaving Trials Fusion potent on paper but incomplete as a realized game.
Trials’ unique brand of racing is alive and well in Trials Fusion. Career mode pushes through the player through, among other events, an escalating series of traditional time attack races. The first dozen tracks are a breeze for series veterans, but a challenge starts to appear once medium difficulty tracks are available. Progression is also handled in a familiar way. Making it past the finish line grants a bronze medal, getting there with a limited number of restarts is good for silver, and nearly perfect runs yield gold. Harder collections of new tracks are gated by your medal count, though, at least in my experience, never to the point where content feels locked out.
It’s been two years since Trials Evolution, meaning I had to reacquaint myself with bunny-hops, proper throttle management, and figuring out how in the hell to ascend what appears to be a completely vertical surface. Like past games, Trials Fusion also takes its time to properly introduce advanced concepts to players, conceding execution – not inquisition – as its intended challenge. Four (and a half) bikes boast radically different performance, and learning to manage their respective weight and throttle across different obstacles carries most of Trials Fusions’ traditional challenge. Of the sixty different events inside career mode, maybe eighty-percent are classic Trials time attack races.
You’ll fail in Trials Fusion. Sometimes you fail hundreds of times per course. Repeated failure typically stands as an obstacle to player enjoyment, a gradually decreasing threshold until the player reaches their personal “f— this” moment and puts the controller down (or hurls it into a wall). The folks at RedLynx understand this, which is why Trials Fusion, like Trials before it, is quick to get the player back in the game. Two different buttons are dedicated to instantly restarting progress. Either reset the whole race and pursue a gold medal, or knock yourself back to the last checkpoint and tackle a problematic jump. As the lesson of Super Meat Boy goes, the quicker the player can get back into the game, the less likely they are to jump ship.
Virtually everything I’ve already written could have also been said about Trials Evolution, and it still applies to Trials Fusion. It’s a testament to how well the formula works, but also how little the basics of Trials have changed. Expressed purely in mechanics, there were few challenges in Fusion that weren’t already explored in Evolution. Furthermore, Evolution seemed to have a more diverse set of environments, both artistically and mechanically, and progression seemed more evenly spread across Evolution’s suite of tracks. The intention in creating Fusion, of course, is how well existing mechanics are supposed to work alongside fresh content.
The chief addition to Fusion lies with the integrated trick/stunt system. Trials has always had a casual relationship with tricks, players were free to spin their motorcycle in any number of flips for pure pleasure, but now certain challenges in Fusion play for keeps. FMX events arrive midway through the career and provide (relatively) basic tracks with huge jumps to allow the player to accumulate trick points. Tricks can be engaged once the player is airborne and are assigned to the shifting motion of the right analog stick. Actions like flips and wheelies are good for points as well, but a majority of tricks, be it a superman off the back end or lying like a coffin on top of the bike, are poised to rack up points.
There are several issues with Trials Fusion’s trick system. Perhaps the most damaging is I rarely felt like I had control over the exact type of trick that was being performed. Performing a trick is reliant upon the position of the bike and the direction you push the right analog stick, though I could rarely do the same thing with any sort of consistency. This turned out not to matter so much when I came to racking up points; as long as I was able to hold a pose and break it before I landed I was sufficiently rewarded. I was rewarded even more when I mindlessly switched between tricks before landing. In fact, I managed to achieve gold on almost all of the FMX events with relative ease. Tricks can also be performed on proper Trials tracks later on, but the question is, why? Sure, it looks cool and adds another element to Trials’ daredevil appeal, but it’s fundamentally pointless in the scope of the game. Tricks aren’t a revolutionary addition to Trials’ established system, but rather a curious oddity lacking levels designed to properly test their merit.
Tricks aren’t the only addition to Trials Fusion’s formula; certain tracks either require or have the option to use an ATV. At first, ATV’s seem to present a major change to the way the game can be played. Whereas bikes are powered exclusively by rotation from their back tire, all four of an ATV’s tires are engaged in motion. Weight is compensated by pure thrust, seemingly shifting the dynamic by which one plays the game. And yet, ATV’s feel like an easier version of the bike. Mentally a four wheeled craft seems more secure than its two wheeled counterpart, and it relies less on leaning forward and backward than the more nuanced bikes. ATV’s are certainly challenging, but not challenging enough to become an appreciable part of Trials Fusion’s design. Like tricks, the inclusion of ATV’s feels purely for the sake of creating variety.
Trials Fusion’s brightest moments are reserved for optional challenges available inside every traditional Trials course. Completing these challenges provides a slight experience boost to your total player level, but their existence is founded upon equal parts challenge and insanity. There are, for example, numerous challenges that task the player with maintaining a wheel between two set points of a course, or making it all the way through a course without letting go of the throttle button. There are also vague challenges that require a bit of poking around; “win a game of tennis…” for example, required me to idle on the tennis court before teleporting me to a tennis match with a penguin.”Unnatural Disaster” made me find a time bomb to strap to my back before of could blow up an equally vague part of the course. There are also a mixture of these two distinct type of challenge, requiring the player to locate a warp zone (or perform some other outrageous action) to access a different and more difficult set of geography within the existing level.
Challenges were my favorite addition to Trials Fusion. They called to mind the silly and insane one-off events that populated Trials Evolution, except this time around they feel better integrated into the proper game. Some are buried so deep down I’ll have to wait for people smarter than me to post YouTube videos of it first; on my own I discovered and completed a half dozen of the truly weird challenges. It’s worth mentioning that Trials Fusion also packs in a handful of designated Skill Events, tasking the player with challenges like performing tricks to keep up an adrenaline meter, or blowing off the front wheel after making a certain amount of contact.
Perhaps the weirdest part of Trials Fusion is the surreal and goofy narrative peppered throughout its courses. Aside from a musical theme that literally shouts, “MAN. MACHINE. THE FUTURE,” an announcer, Cindy, occasionally comments on your progress and the general state of Trials Fusions’ futuristic setting. The whole game boasts an aesthetic that reminded me of an ultra-clean Chiba, Japan alongside vestiges of an uncertain future, all of which is accented by opaque commentary from Cindy. Midway through Trials Fusion the narrative feels poised for unseen twists and turns, but by the end it rounds it into something more…predictable. Without giving the twist away, it’s already been done in a popular independent game from last year, along with countless films. This isn’t necessarily a complaint (who the hell would have though a story would be an endearing asset of a Trials game?), but it does feel like an odd waste of potential.
Trials Fusion reprises similar extra content from previous Trials games. Local multiplayer is an engaging option, as are ghosts of your friends’ best runs haunting through the career mode courses. A robust and engaging track builder is also present, thought its lessons are left to YouTube links provided by RedLynx. Taking note of the incredible amount of challenging courses that players built for Evolution, a bunch of inspired creations are on their way. There’s also a nebulous “pyrosequence” tournament option that doesn’t appear to be working as of this writing.
A cohesive presentation is the one area where Trials Fusion trumps any previous iteration. Part of this is undoubtedly due to playing it on a PlayStation 4 and admiring the beauty provided by proper resolution and a consistent frame rate. There were some hitches; textures took a second to pop up when completely resetting a track, but visually Trials Fusion is the cleanest looking game in the series. The most dramatic improvement lies with the music; an original, eclectic soundtrack has replaced the licensed turd rock that populated previous games. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better at keeping pace with the silly theme exhibited through the game.
Depending on how you purchased Trials Fusion, a considerable amount of content is on its way. A $40 retail purchase includes a season pass, itself promising six separate downloadable content packs. Given the crazy amount of DLC that supported Trials Evolution, it’s a safe bet that Red Lynx will make good on future content. The season pass is an extra $20 if purchased alongside the $20 digital version of Trials Fusion, creating the same value for digital consumers.
