‘Trials Fusion’ a fun platformer

While the theme song music leaves little to be desired, as it the cheesiest thing since spray cheese, Trials Fusion, developed by RedLynx and published by Ubisoft, is an extremely fun platformer racing game.

Trials Fusion is a sequel to the 2012 game Trials Evolution released on PC and Xbox 360. It is the 13th game to be released under the Trials name, although it is the first one available on three or more major platforms including the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

In the career mode, there are eight different themed areas you can ride with your bike, of which you can unlock six total through the course of the game. There are a handful of courses in each themed area where the goal is to earn a bronze, silver or gold medal based on the time it took you to finish the course and how many faults you had (how many times you crashed). Within each area there are also specialized challenge courses where you need to complete a specific task such as doing tricks to earn points or even bailing out of your bike after a jump to see how much air you can get before landing.

As you continue to progress through the game you unlock bikes, courses and upgrades to your own character. With your bike you can change the color, upgrade the body kit and upgrade the wheels by earning specific medals on specific courses. With your character you can change the way they look by buying themed helmets, shirts and pants with the in-game currency you earn from the races.

My lone quibble with the game thus far is the FMX trick system, which is new for the series. With it you can do different tricks to earn points in each event. The system is not hard to actually use but it is difficult to pull off specific tricks when asked. Each different trick is done by pressing a variety of buttons which I assigned as the arrow keys on the PC version I played. There are about fifteen different tricks you can do with essentially just 4 buttons, so it can get confusing, especially if you have to also worry about having to actually land and continue to move instead of just doing the trick.

Thus far, I have yet to even touch the multiplayer portion of the game, but it is clear that the value is there, regardless of the platform.

The game is everything you would expect in a Trials game. It is entertaining while still being challenging and is tough to put down once you get going.