On the surface, Trials HD has a ridiculously terrible title. After you sit down with it for even a few tracks, it turns out it is incredibly accurate name for the gorgeous time trial racer. Trials HD is built on a very simple concept. You control a motorcycle through a 2D track, with plenty of explosives and jumps along the way. The physics-heavy gameplay forces you to constantly monitor both the speed of the bike and the posture of its rider, leaning him forward and back on the bike as the situation dictates. The game spreads its levels through five difficulty levels, and you spend the first half of them just learning how to properly feather the gas and lean your rider through the ramp-heavy warehouse. Once you break into the Hard difficulty, you are forced to figure out how to use your arsenal of carefully executed flips to drive around obstacles that block your path.
All the while, you unlock multi-stage tournaments, additional bikes, and skill game to extend the experience. There is a ton of content included in the game, without even digging into the level creator or medals rewarded based on time and number of crashes on each track. Skill games, like ski jumping or stair diving, are a blast and show off the game's masochistic personality with goals like breaking as many bones as possible. The wealth of content would be useless if the game did not play as great as it does. You learn quickly that jamming on the gas at all times is a huge mistake, and that leaning forward when sprinting up a ramp is a must. The simplistic controls are perfect for a game requiring so much precision, especially when attempting the more advanced maneuvers.
There is plenty of trial and error involved in the tracks, especially when you start performing your own 'ollies' on the bike by rapidly adjusting your rider's posture back and forth. You will crash plenty after the initial set of tracks, but forgiving checkpoint placement and a quick restart button makes it tolerable. The only real issue with the gameplay is that the crash detection is a bit lacking when you do not have a full-speed accident. The slow crashes seem to confuse the game a bit, forcing you to rock the upside-down bike with the brake and gas until it realizes what happened. Still, you are not moving slowly often enough for it to cause any serious issues. There is no traditional multiplayer support, but seeing the times of your friends listed with yours at the end of each track is a constant reminder that the game is as much about speed as it is completing the tracks.
Seeing yourself trailing your top friend by under a second is all the fuel you need to replay a track. Creative types will fall for the level creator. The creator defaults to the simple creator, with nine classes of items to select, but you can turn on the advanced creator for an additional seven classes of items and physics control. Creating your own levels is easy enough, with the ability to label your own medal requirements for each. You can also upload and share your creations with those on your friends list, though the game really needs to open the sharing to the entire Live community to flourish. The game is gorgeous to look at, with some fantastic rag doll physics controlling how your rider lands and reacts to environmental objects and explosions.
The decaying warehouse setting for the levels never gets old, thanks to sprawling levels and the increasingly difficult paths they lay out. Things are constantly falling apart, catching fire, or exploding as you race toward the finish line, and it all looks and reacts realistically. The gritty 3D tracks make you completely forget that the track itself is 2D. The horrifically hilarious crashes are a blast to watch, until you are furiously angry at a specific section of a track and are forced to use the quick restart option. The metal tinged score and sparse voice work seem right at home in the setting, giving the game a unified industrial presentation. Trials HD is at the same time both a perfectionist's wet dream and horrifying nightmare. Who would have thought the Summer Of Arcade game with the worst name and simplest concept would be among XBLA's finest games?
