The Tribulations of Trials Evolution

Note: Much like the Max Payne 3 post, I don’t intend for this to be a review, just some thoughts on the game that have been bouncing around in my head for awhile now. I’m going to omit a few things about the game in the following wall of text, so here they are in short form: the game has multiplayer (online and off, both good), two track editors (regular and pro), filesharing (custom made tracks, which are occasionally incredible), skill games (most of which are silly and fun), and a supercross mode (which isn’t quite as fun as just regular Trials in terms of multiplayer, but is still pretty neat and features four players on screen at once). The game also features “ghosts” of people on your friends list who have already completed a track, allowing you to race their “ghost” and compete against their time. It’s a neat idea, but I found it to be sort of distracting and decided to turn it off at some point. 

Yep, this looks about right.

In the grand tradition that I seem to be starting with these posts, I’m going to talk about a game that’s been out for several months now. That game is Trials Evolution, and if I have one thing to say about this particular game, it’s this: fuck Trials Evolution.

Don’t misunderstand me — I don’t mean “fuck Trials Evolution” in a fun, ha-ha-just-kidding type of way. Seriously, fuck this game.

I’m not the type of person who ordinarily gets angry at video games. I’m not a controller-thrower. I don’t even swear at my screen or blame the Xbox for being an idiot when something is clearly my own fault. I genuinely think Trials Evolution  is the only video game that actually makes me angry. I throw fits, I swear, I stomp around. It turns me into a child. At first, I couldn’t quite understand why a physics-based game about motocross, of all things, could get me so upset as to turn me into the very type of person that I used to look down on (the controller-thrower, the screen-swearer, the getting-angry-at-inanimate-objects type of person). As it turns out, Trials Evolution is just one of those games that causes you to re-examine your values and take a good/hard/long look at who you are as a person. Maybe you’ll come out the other end a much more well-rounded, wonderful person. Probably not, though, since you’re going to be too busy with all of that anger you’ll be feeling.

Part of what makes this game so frustratingly difficult is that everything you do wrong, every single time you screw up, is entirely your own fault. The game’s systems, namely the physics and the way the bikes handle (there are five of them in the game and they all have unique properties), are so incredibly fine-tuned that they’re damn near perfect. It’s the type of semi-realistic game where every tiny maneuver, from letting off the throttle when you hit a ramp in order allow yourself just the right amount of momentum to make the landing, to how much you’re accelerating before you hit that ramp or how much you lean forward/backward half-way up that same goddamn ramp, make all the difference in the world.

This is an actual thing. God dammit.

What this basically amounts to is that when you don’t accelerate enough, or you don’t tilt the bike at just the right angle when taking on a ramp, it’s you that has messed up, not the game. The physics and handling in Trials Evolution are so spot on that the game itself can’t possibly be wrong, and the amount of frustration and self-loathing that one can feel while playing (and failing) this game hits depths that no man should ever feel. It’s erectile dysfunction in video game form.

On some of the more extreme tracks, the game basically becomes a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer, in which every tilt of the bike or burst of acceleration is a different mechanic available for the express purpose of figuring out how to solve a particularly challenging piece of the track. It’s hard to express in words just how fucked the last set of tracks in this game are, so here’s a video that expresses that idea perfectly.

I’m not going to bullshit you and say that I didn’t play this game for an inordinate amount of hours. I’m pretty sure I’ve got gold stars on all of the tracks except for maybe half of the extreme ones. And honestly, I’m not sure why I did that. Maybe it was just an angry month. Maybe I had a minor aneurysm and my brain chemistry shifted and all I could do was seek out the thing that filled me with the most rage for a few weeks back in April and May (that’s how aneurysms work, right?). I seriously cannot tell you why this game sold as well as it did or why I continued to play it past the point of frustration and pure, furious impotency.

Oh wait, yes I can. This game is, in fact, excellent. It’s hardcore in a way that video games just aren’t anymore. Not big budget ones, anyway. Not to sound like someone hungering for nostalgia or pandering to the indie-game crowd, but a lot of games just aren’t challenging anymore. Some  of them practically aim and shoot for you, puzzles are more of an excuse to fill time rather than to wrack the player’s brain, and a lot of platformers have traded timing and skill for flashy moves and “hardcore parkour.” It’s the great debate of the casualization of the video game industry and what that means for the future of gaming, but that’s for a different post (maybe next week, but probably not, since that debate hasn’t been interesting since it started).

Casualization is neither here nor there — Trials Evolution is one of the most hardcore, challenging video games that you could pay money for, and it’s worth every penny. I will go on record as saying that there is rarely a feeling as satisfying as finishing an extreme track in Trials Evolution under the minimum fault requirements for earning the gold medal. It is a sublime, incredible, downright insane feeling of triumph that’s only rivaled, in terms of pure video game elation, by the feeling of accomplishment one might get out of just surviving in Dark Souls. It’s a painful, wonderful, addictive experience. Add to that all of the wonderful things that RedLynx has done to give this game some extended life (the multiplayer/track sharing as mentioned above), and you’ve got a complete package that feels like it’s worth well over $15.

All of those nice things being said, there’s still a part of me that really, really hates this game. RedLynx, the developers behind the game, took notice of the complaints that many gamers had in regards to the learning curve in Trials HD and addressed that by easing players into Trials Evolution. By and large, their attempts at slowly feeding game mechanics to the players and ramping up the difficulty over the course of the game are successful, but this game is still Trials. The extreme tracks are still insane, the physics and handling are still (sort of) grounded in reality, and it’s still punishing in a way that few games are. In fact, I don’t think the “B” button on my Xbox 360 controller is even functional anymore — there’s just a smoldering crater where it used to be.

So, in conclusion: fuck this game. Seriously.