Trials Fusion Review

Platform: Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One

Developer: Redlynx Studios

Publisher: Ubisoft

Score: 8

There is a certain level of skill and frustration that is created as a result of the  Trials games, and its easy enough to say that it is probably what brings people to purchase them time and time again. We can be happy in knowing that the latest game in the franchise is just like those of the past and remains just as enjoyable. The latest game in the franchise, Trials Fusion, is the first of its kind to get a proper release on blu-ray and it offers plenty to new and old alike.

The game takes place in the future. A time where apparently motorcycle stunt courses exist in public places and in high traffic areas. Trials Fusion is just like all past Trails games as the goal is to achieve gold medals in every course given. The world of Trials is filled with varying locations and a variety of skill based challenges to complete and a game so packed full of content that it can keep you busy for a number of hours.

The main mode of the game is the career mode, which is all about achieving the goal presented to you. The main part of career mode is about going through puzzling courses and trying to get the best possible time without crashing. Each course you are challenged with has a series of obstacles that become increasingly more challenging as the course continues. Ensuring the correct landings are made and proper speed is used up hills becomes a major challenge, but in the long run it is what makes the game enjoyable. Figuring out the best course of action and the fastest way to get over obstacles is a key challenge in the game and it becomes more enjoyable as the game progresses.

The difficulty of all these courses have increased from the previous games. Initial courses are simple to beat, but remain hard to master. Likewise the further you progress, the more the challenge of each course becomes. Some of the harder tracks are simple enough in concept, but the game does get deceptively challenging the further along in the game you go. At points however, I do feel that the difficulty of level did ramp up a bit to much and some courses felt unbalanced from the others in terms of difficulty. For example, I completed a good selection of the medium difficulty courses achieving gold in almost all of them, however at times I did encounter one or two that were almost impossible to complete without trouble. The hard courses I also found the same problem with, some were easy enough to get through even if achieving gold is a challenge, some other courses seem almost impossible to beat.

As well as offering speed and skill based courses the career mode also offers a series of stunt challenges. These require you to perform flips and a series of other motorbike stunt challenges in order to strive for good scores. Mastering these tricks is not easy and requires being able to acknowledge correct landings, bike positionings and knowing how to perform all the different stunts possible. To learn these you are initially given a basic tutorial which tasks you with performing specific tricks in order to learn how to do them, then performing them across the course. Of course mastering how to perform the tricks and moving the joystick in that particular way is simple but it really get’s challenging in trying to make good landings and achieve the best score. When doing this I did come across an issue even when I had my joystick, bike and person in the right stunt position the game would only respond to the stunt and provide a score every so often which did get really frustrating and did break a good run and mess with my final score.

Expanding on the game is the excellent create mode which is where a lot of Trails Fusion fun is to be had. The community behind the game is full of creative minds who sit there and build excellent courses to be played and enjoyed by other players. Likewise the developers RedLynx have created a good selection of tools for building great courses. A selection of ramps, hazards and environmental features are all available to be used, but notably there is quite a challenge possessed in building individual courses. While in theory it sounds easy enough and there is definitely many hours of playability possessed by the game. At times some of what is offered with the creation may be a bit to challenging for some to complete. The creation mode is set on a 3D plain so ensuring you line up all your ramps and everything correctly is part of the challenge. Since stages only exist on a 2D plain confusion can arise if they are not lined up and you end up riding on nothing. For the creative minded this is still perfect, all the tools given and the freedom you get when creating your courses mean you can easily enjoy the mode and I suppose part of the fun is learning how to create courses. Trying your best and creating a really challenging course of your own design and performing at the course is quite the accomplishment, and the game rewards you for that. I will still say I am pretty bad at making courses but I have enjoyed trying to accomplish something good.

Trials Fusion is just like it’s predecessors, it is stressful, it’s challenging, but it is enjoyable none the less. The amount of hours the game offers are essentially endless and the game continues to be vastly enjoyable even late into the game. The little issues do break some of the value and bring unnecessary frustration to the game but it can be forgiven as most of the time things do work out. I don’t ordinarily play these type of games but I will say what the game offers will definitely offer people a good amount of fun regardless of whether or not they enjoy this particular type of game.

Rhythm Thief and the Emperor’s Treasure Review

Platform: 3DS

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Year: 2012

Score: 9

This review was originally written a few weeks after the games release in 2012, I just only recently found my review to bring you, so here is my review of Rhythm Thief as it was originally written with some minor editing.

Sega has been on a downward spiral for the last few years, they have failed to really reignite the flame for the Sonic series and haven’t really been able to deliver a must have game for a while. With this being the case many planned projects had to be cancelled but really what is surprising is how one game managed to slip through the cracks and that game being Rhythm Thief. The question is however why did this game slip through? It is simple some toe tapping music and a great story that really is set to deliver.

Sega’s hopes all lie in this game that they published and developed. The story in Rhythm Thief is set in a modern day Paris and follows the exploits of a young boy named Raphael who under the rouse of Phantom R seeks out to steal items of interest with the help of his dog sidekick Fondue. As the story goes on Raphael must enlist the assistance of a mysterious girl named Marie, constantly avoid the police and attempt to stop the plans of a resurrected Napoleon Bonaparte. The games story and presentation stand out quite well and easily can draw in with its wonderful mystery. The only unfortunate side to the story is that it is short and only lasts for about six hours.

Like the Layton series Rhythm Thief presents regular anime style cutscenes  that help to push the story forward, and the animation within these scenes is really beautiful. Though that is not the only similarity drawn from the Layton series as the game often uses picturesque locations that must be tapped around in order to find hidden collectables which gets tedious quickly, there are also little puzzles that appear along the way that while quite enjoyable to complete they do tend to lack difficulty often being easy to beat.

With all that said the gameplay also fairs quite well and is almost as good as the plotline. Rhythm Thief features 50 Rhythm games that can be found across the course of the story and beyond, they range from simple swipe in a certain direction in order to an action to the rhythm for dance games, there is even a rather interesting violin challenge,  as well as pressing buttons to a specific rhythm to take out or avoid enemies in some recurring challenges.While they use these methods for the rhythm games quite frequently there is still plenty of diversity offered between rhythm games that even includes a Samba De Amigo inspired challenge, and a decent a decent sword fighting challenge that is actually pretty good.

That is not to say this gameplay is perfect, in fact some of the rhythm games are troublesome and are actually quite annoying. Some of the rhythm games are controlled by the gyroscope on the 3DS, the system is awkward and it quickly becomes upsetting when you get to a point in the story that requires you to beat these games in order to move on. Another complaint is the scoring system, the problem here is the system forces you to be near perfect all the way through through the game to get a good grade, making a single mistake can end up being costly and can turn an A grade all the way down to a fail by missing that single point it isn’t game breaking by any stretch of the imagination but it is quite frustrating and can leave you quite annoyed.

Despite those few flaws the music really fully redeems Rhythm Thief and is just brilliant, for a game about rhythm you would always hope that they can deliver on the music and it does, Rhythm Thief offers an assortment of genres in its music that is sure to appeal to most players. My personal favourites are more of the orchestral pieces or solo violin they are relaxing and can keep you calm and happy even if you are doing poorly. Outside of these particular types I often found a good selection of the music offered to be ones that it was easy to tap my toes with while playing, and the good sign about it is the music gets stuck in your head so I often found myself humming along with a theme from the game randomly. It just goes to show how memorable it is when I can still remember it and still on occasion start randomly singing the songs, which outside of Disney is a really hard thing to make me do.

Sure Rhythm Thief has its flaws but even with the problems the story, presentation, gameplay and music are still very memorable. For me personally I don’t think I would have cared if the music or even gameplay were there Rhythm Thief in a sense is really about its story and its presentation which is just so amazing and in my opinion is the main reason to play the game, the gameplay and music do really help hit it home though. I really hope we see more adventures with Raphael in the future, Rhythm Thief is probably one of the best games I have ever played and I couldn’t recommend this Sega masterpiece anymore then I already do.