This deal shouldn’t have been allowed. Trials of the Blood Dragon is the equivalent of slathering a bicycle and an action figure in neon paint and then violently bashing them together until they resemble a singular, weaponized creature. Like a bike without brakes or a toy with too many moving parts, Trials of the Blood Dragon is prone to self-destruction, but its cocksure embrace of 80’s action cinema and good-enough mechanics don’t quite violate its contract.
For the uninitiated, Trials is developer RedLynx’s physics-based motorcycle racing platformer. While it restricts the player to two dimensions, it allows complete 360-degree control over bike rotation and binary but highly effective gas/brake combo. Challenge comes from managing and applying all acquired momentum over tricky and increasingly surreal courses ripe with drops and jumps. Trials hit it big with Trials HD in 2009, reached its apex with Evolution in 2012, and kind of hit a wall when Fusion ran out of ideas in 2014. Blood Dragon, on the other hand, was a standalone slice of Far Cry 3 repurposed into a neon nightmare that bet the house (and won) on its cyber-future aesthetic.
Trials of the Blood Dragon’s accompanying narrative is a direct follow-up to its namesake. You play as the children of Rex Power Colt (Michael Beihn, in a role that remains perfectly cast), Slayter and Roxanne. It seems that Rex perished while single-handedly fighting Vietnam War 4, and his children have taken up the mantle of defending freedom, or preventing some sort of alien species from acquiring blood dragon blood, or whatever the game appears to be concerned with four for levels. Trials of the Blood Dragon’s courses are gathered into levels that riff on a particular 90’s theme, assuming a similar style and aura before quickly heading out the back door.
While the original Blood Dragon was a focused homage to an impossible future, Trials of the Blood Dragon feels like more of a scattershot blast of 80’s neo-noir alongside the 90’s penchant for harsh angles and extreme attitude. There’s also a manic pulse of intensity running throughout the entire game, with punchy (and occasionally full motion video) non-sequiturs acting as lightning fast commercials between level loads. Other than Slayter’s voice actor, whose own apparent inexperience can’t quite sell his character’s naive enthusiasm, Trials of the Blood Dragon’s raging fiction hits most of its goofy marks.
At first, Trials of the Blood Dragon performs in line with expectations. Trials games frequently take it slow, issuing basic jumps that land on friendly angles. This is also the case here; rather than focus on straight platforming and leave extraneous experiments as a side show, Trials of the Blood Dragon works out its more outlandish ideas right inside its twenty-seven levels. On one hand this kind of makes sense, acquiring and upgrading bikes has been removed from Trials’ framework, giving the levels a one-size-fits-all architecture. On the other hand, man, the demanding nature of some of these sequences is going to have people screaming obscenities in every direction.
Examine the jetpack. Deployed three or four times throughout Trials of the Blood Dragon, it looks like it allows easy movement along the Y-plane. What it actually does, however, is obey Trials’ circular motion of the left analog stick and receives thrust from the R2 button. While it’s right in line with how the bikes handle, it’s fundamentally different from every out jetpack out there. Coupled with a sequence where the player has to carry an explosive mine across a considerable distance around tight enclosures and, well, maintaining personal composure is an in indistinct objective.
Maybe half of Trials of the Blood Dragon’s levels have some sort of on-foot sequence. The chief complaint here lies with Slayter and Roxanne’s jump, which is some physics-based monstrosity that neither looks nor operates like a traditional jump. It’s not quite as mushy as LittleBigPlanet, but it’s so alien from the norm that it’s easy to see where it can cause friction. Incorporated alongside the rest of the game, and with a bit of practice, it’s fine amid its occasionally sloppy behavior.
The biggest enhancement to Trials’ structure comes with addition of guns and a grappling hook. On foot, guns operate predictably, with the player using the right stick to unload infinite ammo in the direction of their choice. Normal enemies drop in one hit and are, outside of the occasionally precarious angle, a breeze. On the bikes, however, maintaining an angle of assault alongside the shifting angle of the bike presents an entirely new way to play the game. You can just run over people, too, but where’s the fun in that?
Other gimmicks do well to spread Trials of the Blood Dragon around a little more. There’s the Retro Flip, which identical to
Occasionally, Trials of the Blood Dragon buckles down and flushes gimmicks through the traditional Trials pipeline. During one of the Miami levels, “Consequences,” Slayter gets wasted on turbo crank and begins hallucinating. Pieces of the level evaporate and are reassembled very quickly, removing the crutch of anticipation from the course. Sequences like these wouldn’t work as well in a traditional Trials game, where one can easily spend ten minutes trying to accurately nudge a bike over the tiniest of cliffs, but they’re great in the spirit of a one-off challenge. Trials of the Blood Dragon’s indelible mark on the series is a devotion to variety. While ultimately forced, its diversity isn’t without ambition or direction.
Longevity errs more toward Blood Dragon than Trials. Levels are repeatable, and a few have minor degrees of alternate paths, and each one has its own leaderboard. A couple even have optional collectables that open up secret suitcase found in the hub area. With that in mind, I didn’t feel the burning desire to play any of these more than once. I finished every one under the time limit (you can still proceed in the game even if you don’t make it), but I doubt Trials of the Blood Dragon is something I’d return to. Five or six hours with the existing courses feels like just the right amount.
Trials of the Blood Dragon’s consuming issue is its preference for style over substance. From Mars to neo Vietnam to regular-ass (I assume) Miami, every surface is bathed in fluorescent light, surreal vistas, and perilous danger. Every Trials game has been weird, but with giant eyeballs, hulking monsters, and apocalyptic jungles—not to mention the narrative’s relentless pro-American sentiment—Trials of the Blood Dragon is the visual analog to a weekend spent looking for hidden messages in a dollar bill. What’s awesome without irony is Power Glove’s return to compose the soundtrack. This time around their synthwave groove steps further away from Carpenter and Fiedel, leaving room for percussive samples and the occasional vocal abstraction. Like Beihn, Power Glove’s work is and should be synonymous with Blood Dragon.
Rather than a legitimate entry in either series, Trials of the Blood Dragon’s feels like an afternoon dalliance before getting back to work. The success and appeal of Trials all but guarantees a more earnest and lucid entry in its future. Blood Dragon, however, likely won’t gain the traction necessary to spin out into a legitimate AAA experience. This is fine; it needs a host to riff on anyway, and should be granted a hall pass to periodically show up wreak havoc across Ubisoft’s stable of properties. Until then Trials of the Blood Dragon’s isn’t a bad way to light up an idle Saturday.
